BR  85  . W57  1923 
Wishart,  Charles  Frederick, 
1870-1960. 

The  God  of  the  unexpected 


J 


THE  GOD 
OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


BY 


/ 

CHARLES  FREDERICK  WISHART,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

PRESIDENT  OF  THE  COLLEGE  OF  WOOSTER 
AUTHOR  OF  “tHE  RANGE  FINDERS,”  ‘  THE  UNWELCOME  ANGEL,”  ETC. 


WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION  BY 

JOHN  TIMOTHY  STONE,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

PASTOR  FOURTH  PRESBYTERIAN  CHURCH 

CHICAGO 


THE  COLLEGE  OF  WOOSTER  PRESS 

WOOSTER,  OHIO 


COPYRIGHT,  I923 
BY 

CHARLES  F.  WISHART 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION  BY  DR.  JOHN  TIMOTHY  STONE  .  .  .  vii 

FOREWORD . ix. 

I.  THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED .  1 

II.  HOW  IT  STRIKES  A  CONTEMPORARY  ....  21 

III.  PRAYER  AND  EFFICIENCY . 32 

IV.  THE  FORGOTTEN  SECRET  OF  ZEST . 44 

V.  HEAVEN  IN  THE  MAKING . 57 

VI.  TRACKS  LEADING  BOTH  WAYS . 71 

VII.  THE  SONS  OF  MARY  AND  THE  SONS  OF  MARTHA.  .  91 

VIII.  PAINTING  THE  WHITE  POST . 104 

IX.,  LIFE’S  WIDEST  HORIZON . 120 

X.  THE  SONS  OF  BEATEN  OIL . 133 

XI.  THE  BITTER  CRY  OF  THE  WAR  WEARY  ....  149 

XII.  THE  UPWARD  CALLING . 164 

XIII.  THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  HOUSE . 177 

XIV.  THE  TRAJECTORY  OF  EVIL . 192 

XV.  THE  CROSSED  HANDS  OF  BLESSING . 204 


# 


111 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/godofunexpectedOOwish 


A  WORD  OF  INTRODUCTION 

By  DR.  JOHN  TIMOTHY  STONE 

The  influence  and  standing  of  the  American  pulpit 
have  suffered  because  the  onrush  of  activity  and  the  in¬ 
creasing  demands  of  duty  have  been  too  insistent.  We 
are  grateful  that  one  gifted  with  such  rare  ability  as 
Doctor  Wishart  has  been  willing  to  prepare  this  volume 
of  sermons.  The  scope  and  timeliness  of  the  sub¬ 
jects  considered  are  significant  of  the  mind  and  insight 
of  this  great  preacher. 

His  range  of  familiarity  with  the  best  in  literature  evi¬ 
dences  his  wide  reading  and  ready  memory.  The  aptness 
of  his  illustrations  is  such  that  one  never  feels  that  the 
picture  was  bought  simply  to  fill  the  frame.  His  wealth 
of  knowledge  never  burdens  the  reader,  for  the  selective 
element  controls.  The  wide  vision  and  wisdom  gained 
through  accurate  scientific  information  and  philosophic 
study  enhance  his  thinking  and  command  respect. 

Not  only  do  these  sermons  reveal  the  student  and  read¬ 
er,  but  they  evidence  as  well  the  man  of  affairs  and  the 
man  who  knows  humanity.  As  pastor,  teacher,  and  col¬ 
lege  president,  Dr.  Wishart  has  had  exceptional  experi¬ 
ence  with  all  types  and  conditions  of  people.  His  clear 
mind,  warm  heart,  and  ready  hand  seem  to  combine  with 
an  originality  of  treatment  in  whatever  subject  he  ap¬ 
proaches.  Humor  fascinates  as  well,  but  never  merely 
for  humor’s  sake,  the  error  of  so  many.  This  is  well  il- 


v 


Vi  INTRODUCTION 

lustrated  in  his  reference  to  David  Hume’s  experience 
with  the  old  lady  who  helped  him  from  the  bog  on  con¬ 
dition  that  he  would  repeat  the  Lord’s  Prayer.  The  ser¬ 
mon  on  “Prayer  and  Efficiency”  in  which  this  illustra¬ 
tion  occurs  is  in  my  judgment  one  of  the  most  helpful 
treasures  on  this  subject  we  have. 

The  practical  has  also  its  place  in  this  volume  as  seen  in 
such  sermons  as  “The  Forgotten  Secret  of  Zest.” 

His  analysis  of  character  is  disclosed  in  such  searching 
outline  as  we  find  in  his  portrayal  of  George  Eliot  in 
“The  Trajectory  of  Evil.” 

But  greater  even  than  the  sermons  is  the  man  back  of 
them.  Those  who  know  him  will  welcome  this  volume, 
not  only  for  its  inspiring  thought  and  content,  but  be¬ 
cause  they  love  the  author.  As  one  of  those  whose  very 
definition  of  friendship  has  been  deepened  by  his  com¬ 
panionship,  and  whose  life  and  work  have  been  enriched 
by  his  voice  and  pen,  I  welcome  with  gratitude  this  volume 
of  sermons. 

Not  long  since,  as  I  was  walking  through  a  little  far- 
western  town,  I  was  greeted  familiarly  by  a  young  man, 
a  recent  graduate  of  The  College  of  Wooster.  After 
making  himself  known  to  me,  and  introducing  his  wife 
and  little  child,  he  said,  “What  a  splendid  man  our  Presi¬ 
dent  is !”  His  face  was  aglow,  his  heart  in  his  words. 
Such  is  the  esteem  in  which  this  man  of  God  and  leader 
of  men  is  held  by  student  and  friend  everywhere,  and 
with  such  men  and  their  messages  the  problems  of  aca¬ 
demic  study  and  the  problems  of  the  modern  preacher 
can  and  will  be  met.  Faithfully 

John  Timothy  Stone 

Fourth  Church  Study 
Chicago,  III. 


FOREWORD 


The  sermons  and  addresses  in  this  volume  are  selected 
from  those  which  have  been  delivered  at  various  services 
of  The  College  of  Wooster.  They  are  placed  before  a 
wider  constituency  as  quite  obviously  .platform  talks, 
written  always  with  the  mental  picture  of  an  audience  at 
the  back  of  one's  mind.  The  spoken  word  and  the  printed 
page  are  media  of  expression  so  dissimilar  in  character 
that  it  requires  some  temerity  to  shift  from  the  one  to  the 
other  without  radical  revision.  The  venture  has  been 
made,  however,  in  the  confidence  that  most  readers  will 
understand  the  self-evident  plan  and  purpose  of  the  orig¬ 
inal  construction.  Most  public  speakers  learn  to  take 
without  too  much  seriousness  the  requests  to  print  which 
often  come  out  of  the  fervor  of  a  public  meeting.  All  of 
us  understand  that  these  estimates  do  not  represent  the 
reliable  and  sober  second  thought.  But  the  present  writer 
is  grateful  beyond  all  expression  for  beautiful  circles  of 
friendship  in  certain  churches  to  which  he  has  ministered, 
and  among  the  faculty,  students,  alumni,  and  friends  of 
the  College  which  he  now  serves.  It  was  felt  that  in  these 
circles  at  least  he  might  be  justified  in  giving  to  certain 
messages  a  more  permanent  form. 

Miss  Leila  A.  Compton,  Miss  Olla  Fern  Kieffer,  and 
Miss  Gretchen  R.  White  have  given  invaluable  service  in 
the  tracing  and  confirming  of  quotations  and  poems  con¬ 
tained  in  this  volume.  It  is  unfortunate  to  have  that  type 

vii 


Vlll 


FOREWORD 


of  perverse  mind  to  which  some  old  phrase  or  song  clings 
like  a  burr,  but  which  seems  incapable  of  recalling  the 
time  and  location  of  original  contact.  A  few  quotations 
and  poems  have  proved  elusive  even  to  the  literary  detec¬ 
tives  of  the  New  York  Times.  We  have  used  “due 
diligence,”  but  if  any  old  songs  and  phrases  should  by 
chance  be  misquoted,  the  reader  is  asked  to  imitate  that 
patience  which  Mr.  Kipling  attributed  to  Homer’s  audi¬ 
tors,  who  “  ’eard  old  songs  turn  up  again,  but  kep’  it 
quiet — same  as  you.” 

Dr.  Waldo  H.  Dunn  has  shown  great  kindness  in  the 
correction  of  the  proof  sheets.  The  reader  should  un¬ 
derstand,  in  justice  to  his  finished  literary  craftsman¬ 
ship,  that  his  supervision  has  not  gone  beyond  this.  Any 
culpable  lapses  of  taste,  style,  or  statement  are  charge¬ 
able  to  the  author  alone. 

Without  a  formal  dedicatory  page  the  writer  cannot 
forbear  one  personal  touch.  He  would  honor  himself 
by  linking  with  this  book — the  labor  of  his  love — the 
name  of  Josephine  Long  Wishart,  who  for  nearly  two 
decades,  as  partner  and  comrade,  has  shared  with  him  in 
the  toil  and  tears,  the  joy  and  laughter,  of  service  in  the 
Christian  Ministry. 

Charles  Frederick  Wishart 


THE  GOD 

OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 

I 

THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 

The  crucial  question  with  which  all  discussion  of  the 
supernatural  must  start  is  this :  “Has  God  exhausted 
Himself  in  the  universe,  or  has  He  powers  in  reserve?” 
Whether  dualists  or  spiritual  monists  in  philosophy, 
Christian  believers  all  agree  that  everything  that  is,  natur¬ 
al  or  supernatural,  rests  on  the  all-embracing  will  of  God. 
And  in  this  broad  sense  everything  which  comes  to  pass 
must  conform  to  law, — that  is,  to  God’s  will.  Nothing 
can  possibly  happen  without  the  circle  of  His  volitions. 
But  if  God  has  not  exhausted  Himself,  there  may  be 
events  which  conform  to  His  Will,  yet  run  counter  to  the 
ordinary  manifestations  of  that  will  in  the  routine  of 
nature. 

To  grasp  this  thought,  you  must  sharply  distinguish 
the  immanence  and  the  transcendence  of  God.  He  is  im¬ 
manent  in  the  laws  of  the  universe,  and  yet  He  trans¬ 
cends  them.  There  is  more  of  Him  than  has  been  ex¬ 
pressed  in  the  cosmos.  If  you  do  not  believe  that,  then 
you  are  a  pantheist  and  heaven  alone  is  to  help  you,  for 
you  have  blotted  out  not  only  miracles,  but  morals.  The 


2 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


moment  you  lose  the  transcendence,  the  moment  you  con¬ 
ceive  that  “God  is  all  and  all  is  God/'  that  moment  per¬ 
sonal  relations  vanish,  and  with  them  personal  responsi¬ 
bility. 

Granted  the  doctrine  of  transcendence,  our  definitions 
begin  to  emerge.  Nature  is  God’s  manifestation  in  His 
immanence ;  the  supernatural,  the  outflashing  of  His  trans¬ 
cendence.  Horace  Bushnell  defines  “natura”  etymologic¬ 
ally  as  the  future  participle  of  “nascor,”  “the  about  to 
come  to  pass,” — that  is,  the  settled  routine  of  cosmic 
processes.  The  supernatural,  then,  would  be  anything 
not  in  the  chain  of  natural  cause  and  effect,  or  that  acts 
on  the  chain  of  cause  and  effect  in  nature  from  without 
the  chain.  What  then  is  a  miracle?  Three  definitions 
are  urged. 

The  miracle  is  wholly  a  manifestation  of  God’s  trans¬ 
cendence  and  without  any  regard  for,  or  cooperation  with, 
His  immanent  laws.  “It  is,”  says  Charles  Hodge,  “of 
such  a  character  that  it  can  be  rationally  referred  to  no 
other  cause  than  the  immediate  volition  of  God.”  It  is 
“produced  or  caused  by  the  simple  volition  of  God,  with¬ 
out  the  intervention  of  any  subordinate  cause.” 

At  the  opposite  extreme  are  those  who  define  a  miracle 
as  lying  wholly  in  the  field  of  God’s  immanent  manifesta¬ 
tions.  It  is  to  be  explained  by  subtle  unexplored  laws 
which  yet  are  contained  in  the  ordinary  routine  of  na¬ 
ture’s  operations.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  Whitman  sings : 

“Why !  who  makes  much  of  a  miracle  ? 

As  to  me,  I  know  of  nothing  else  but  miracles, 

•  •  •  • 

To  me,  every  hour  of  the  light  and  dark  is  a  miracle, 

Every  cubic  inch  of  space  is  a  miracle, 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


3 


Every  square  yard  of  the  surface  of  the  earth  is  spread 
with  the  same, 

Every  foot  of  the  interior  swarms  with  the  same; 

Every  spear  of  grass — the  frames,  limbs,  organs,  of  men 
and  women,  and  all  that  concerns  them, 

All  these  to  me  are  unspeakably  perfect  miracles. 

To  me  the  sea  is  a  continual  miracle; 

The  fishes  that  swim — the  rocks — the  motion  of  the 
waves — the  ships,  with  men  in  them, 

What  stranger  miracles  are  there?” 

In  this  sense  the  miracle  is  not  outside  nature,  but  in¬ 
side,  only  subtly  elusive  and  difficult  to  understand. 

For  purposes  of  this  discussion  we  adopt  a  midway 
view.  For  us  a  miracle  does  not  ignore  second  causes, 
but  is  not  limited  by  them.  It  is  an  outflashing  of  God’s 
transcendence,  but  not  necessarily  immediate.  If  a  man 
had  started  west,  and  having  arrived  at  Chicago  found  a 
telegram  calling  him  back  to  New  York,  the  first  view 
would  suddenly  transport  him  from  Chicago  to  New 
York  without  a  train;  the  second  would  suppose  in  the 
train  itself  some  subtle,  hitherto  undiscovered  power  of 
reversal  by  which  it  turned  about  and  carried  the  man 
and  itself  back  to  New  York.  The  third  view  would  sup¬ 
pose  that  the  president  of  the  road  intervened,  disar¬ 
ranged  the  time  schedule  for  the  time  being,  and  ordered 
the  engineer  to  reverse  the  engine  and  carry  back  the  man. 
In  the  Bible  we  find  special  providences,  such  as  the 
flight  of  quails ;  and  subtle  unexplainable  natural  events, 
such  as  the  drawing  together  of  Peter  and  Cornelius. 
These  are  mysteries,  perhaps,  not  miracles. 

It  is  prerequisite  to  clear  thinking  in  this  matter  that 
we  make  a  sharp  distinction  between  a  mere  mystery  and 
a  miracle.  The  world  is  full  of  what  we  commonly  call 


4 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


miracles,  which  are  nothing  more  than  the  highly  mysteri¬ 
ous,  but  quite  regular  and  habitual,  relations  between 
cause  and  effect.  The  subtle  but  impalpable  and  un¬ 
explainable  sequences  of  life  all  about  us  are  of  course 
the  kind  of  miracle  that  Walt  Whitman  was  singing 
about.  The  common  walks  of  life  about  us  are  crowded 
with  these  mysteries,  though  often  usage  has  dulled  our 
vision  to  their  wonder. 

But  a  miracle,  as  the  storm  center  of  modern  discussion, 
means  more  than  this.  It  is  a  real  interference  with  the 
ordinary  routine  procedure.  No  matter  how  subtle  or 
mysterious  are  the  relations  of  cause  and  effect,  they  are 
not  miracles  if  they  are  normal  and  habitual.  The  miracle 
about  which  the  debate  rages  is  the  supernormal  and  non- 
habitual.  Now  it  is  quite  likely  that  many  of  the  Bible 
miracles  reduce  to  this  first  category  of  mere  mysteries. 
Probably  more  of  them  than  we  realize  are  to  be  ex¬ 
plained  by  extraordinary  psychic  powers,  or  some  notable 
insight  into  the  quite  normal,  but  most  subtle  and  evasive, 
processes  of  nature. 

But  while  this  is  quite  true,  it  does  not  seem  to  be  all 
the  truth.  After  due  allowance  is  made  for  those  natural 
powers  which  lie  beyond  the  average  ken,  and  after  fitting 
discount  and  deduction  for  Oriental  looseness  of  narra¬ 
tive  and  characteristic  vague  conceptions  of  accuracy, 
there  still  remains  a  zone  of  supernormal  manifestation 
which  can  be  set  down  only  as  a  real  displacement  of  the 
normal  processes  by  which  God  expresses  Himself  in 
nature.  The  only  alternative  is  to  impeach  the  record  at 
its  most  vital  salients. 

It  is  really  not  so  difficult  to  distinguish  between  the 
merely  mysterious  and  the  essentially  miraculous,  always 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


5 


granting  broadly  the  reliability  of  the  witnesses.  The 
question  is  not  whether  we  can  conceive  how  the  se¬ 
quences  occur,  but  whether  we  can  conceive  that  they 
could  occur  regularly  and  normally.  Would  it  be  possible 
to  understand  these  extraordinary  sequences  as  fitting 
into  the  regular  processes  of  nature’s  routine?  For  in¬ 
stance,  the  radio  is  to  me  a  real  mystery.  I  cannot  pos¬ 
sibly  understand  the  method  of  it;  yet  I  can  conceive 
how  the  mysterious  laws  by  which  it  operates  can  exist 
normally  and  continuously  without  any  disturbance  of 
the  harmony  of  nature.  But  I  cannot  possibly  conceive 
how  we  should  ever  discover  the  power  of  bringing  the 
dead  back  to  life,  as  a  mysterious  and  unexplainable,  but 
none  the  less  normal  and  habitual  and  continuous  power, 
belonging  to  those  with  insight  subtle  enough  to  use  it.  It 
seems  to  me  that  the  regular  and  continuous  existence 
of  such  a  power  would  really  upset  the  whole  harmony 
of  life  as  we  know  it.  Nor  can  I  conceive  how  the  power 
to  expand  indefinitely  a  loaf  of  bread  could  ever  prove  a 
subtle  but  none  the  less  normal  force  latent  in  humanity. 
It  would  not  take  much  imagination  to  perceive  how  such 
a  power  would  radically  disturb  all  the  balances  of  life, 
physical,  social,  and  moral. 

In  fact,  we  may  broadly  say  that  many  miracles  per¬ 
formed  by  Jesus  seem  to  be  of  such  an  order  and  charac¬ 
ter  that  they  are  not  only  vastly  mysterious,  but  also  bona 
fide  interferences  with  the  ordinary  routine  by  which  God 
expresses  Himself  in  the  world.  I  cannot  conceive  that 
such  powers  could  ever  be  discovered  to  have  a  normal 
place  in  the  ordinary  operations  of  human  life,  no  matter 
what  the  psychic  wonders  which  the  future  may  unroll 
before  us.  Our  present  day  knowledge  may  throw  light 


6 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


upon  that  class  of  sequences  which  are  only  mysterious, 
but  they  have  really  no  light  to  throw  upon  that  class  of 
sequences  which  are  definitely  abnormal  and  non-habit- 
ual.  When  Israel  crossed  the  Red  Sea  we  have  doubtless 
only  a  remarkable  special  providence ;  when  the  prophet 
sweetened  the  brackish  water  we  may  have  only  an  ex¬ 
ceptional  insight  into  certain  processes  of  nature;  but 
when  the  five  thousand  were  fed,  or  when  the  grave  gave 
up  its  dead,  we  have  a  real  break  in  the  continuity  of 
nature’s  processes,  a  sequence  so  unique  that  we  could 
not  suppose  it  to  be  of  the  habitual  order  of  nature  with¬ 
out  upsetting  the  whole  structure  of  ordinary  individual 
and  social  life. 

As  to  the  evidence  itself,  this  is,  of  course,  the  field 
for  the  critical  scholar.  And  yet,  possibly  not  so  much 
his  field  as  we  think  it  is,  or  as  he  thinks  it  is.  I  have 
always  felt  that  a  sense  of  proportion,  a  Spirit-guided 
imagination,  intuitive  ability,  and  a  grasp  of  the  moral 
and  psychological  background,  are  of  at  least  as  great 
value  in  the  estimation  of  this  data  as  is  the  ability  to  dis¬ 
tinguish  between  uncials  and  cursives.  It  is  a  field  too 
much  given  up  to  mere  mathematical  or  historico-critical 
methods.  We  must  get  at  these  moral  and  spiritual  situ¬ 
ations  with  a  large  rqeasure  of  intuition.  Bergsen  points 
out  that  critical  analysis  can  show  only  the  elements  of 
any  given  situation  in  which  it  resembles  other  situations. 
For  the  absolutely  unique  elements  we  must  rely  upon 
intuition,  and  I  suppose  in  regard  to  any  great  miracle, 
like  that  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus,  there  will  always 
be  two  attitudes,  according  as  men  are  guided  by  the 
merely  critical  and  analytical  sense,  or  by  the  moral  and 
intuitional  sense.  The  controlling  factor  in  my  mind 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


7 


regarding  this  miracle  is  the  psychological  and  moral 
background,  both  in  the  character  of  Jesus  and  in  that 
of  His  disciples.  I  cannot  by  any  possibility  construe  a 
theory  that  satisfies  me  on  the  moral  and  psychological 
sides  and  yet  sets  aside  the  veritable  truth  of  the  miracle. 
To  disbelieve  the  supernormal  here  makes  the  whole  moral 
situation  monstrous  and  inconceivable.  It  is  doubtless 
true  that  this  way  of  thinking  is  partially  analytical  and 
partially  intuitional.  One  feels  the  moral  monstrosity  of 
setting  aside  the  miracle  as  a  far  more  intolerable  burden 
than  the  strain  that  comes  through  believing  in  a  break 
of  physical  routine.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  the  man 
whose  train  of  thought  has  been  wholly  critical  will  either 
never  feel  this,  or  else  that  its  grip  upon  him  will  be 
very  vague  and  uncertain. 

Professor  Olin  A.  Curtis,  in  his  work  “The  Christian 
Faith,”  has  divided  the  modern  opponents  of  the  miracle 
into  three  classes.  The  first  of  these  to  which  our  at¬ 
tention  is  to  be  directed  is  that  class  of  thinkers  to  whom 
the  miracle  is  a  sheer  impossibility.  In  the  dictum  of 
Spinoza  the  miracle  was  set  down  as  “impossible.”  Hume 
and  his  followers  softened  the  word  to  “incredible,”  but 
the  meaning  was  substantially  the  same.  The  historical 
evidence  for  the  miracle  is  ruled  out  a  priori ,  and  the  as¬ 
sertion  is  freely  made  that  a  belief  in  the  miracle  is  in¬ 
compatible  with  intellectual  honesty. 

The  reason  for  this  is  the  postulate  of  unbroken  uni¬ 
formity  in  nature.  We  are  told  that  the  inviolate  preci¬ 
sion  of  natural  law  is  a  presumption  without  which  our 
very  thinking  itself  would  have  no  validity. 

Thus  Hume  insisted  that  no  amount  of  evidence  could 
prove  a  miracle.  He  reasoned  somewhat  like  this:  “Our 


8 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


faith  in  miracles  must  rest  on  historical  testimony.  His¬ 
torical  testimony  is  only  the  testimony  of  men  liable  to 
be  deceived.  All  confidence  in  such  testimony  is  founded 
on  experience.  Experience,  however,  teaches  that  hu¬ 
man  testimony  is  not  reliable,  whereas  our  experience  that 
the  course  of  nature  is  uniform  is  without  exception.  It 
will  therefore  always  be  more  probable  that  the  witnesses 
were  mistaken  than  that  the  course  of  nature  has  been 
violated.” 

Of  course  it  will  be  readily  seen  that  Hume’s  famous 
argument  really  involves  a  begging  of  the  question.  He 
has  assumed  the  thing  to  be  proven,  in  his  statement  that 
“our  experience  that  the  course  of  nature  is  uniform  is 
without  exception.”  If  there  be  any  evidence  for  mir¬ 
acles,  it  must  be  counted  in  as  part  of  our  experience. 
And  if  it  is  so  counted  in,  then  our  experience  of  un¬ 
broken  uniformity  is  not  without  exception.  There  is  an 
exception  every  time  anyone  has  witnessed  a  miracle  or 
has  had  an  experience  which  breaks  in  upon  the  ordinary 
course  of  events.  Mr.  Chesterton  has  somewhere  said 
that  there  are  enough  such  experiences  on  record  to  fill 
the  whole  British  Museum  up  to  the  roof.  Mr.  Hume 
evidently  started  by  assuming  the  dictum  which  at  the 
finish,  with  flourishing  trumpets,  he  announced  as  proven. 
He  has  told  us  in  his  premise  that  there  can  be  no  evidence 
for  miracles,  because  miracles  do  not  happen,  as  we  all 
know.  Then  in  his  conclusion  he  has  announced  gravely 
that  miracles  do  not  happen,  as  we  all  know,  because  there 
is  no  evidence. 

It  did  not  take  long  for  thinkers  to  perceive  that  Mr. 
Hume  had  made  a  serious  mistake,  also,  in  balancing  posi¬ 
tive  and  negative  testimony  against  each  other  on  a  parity 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


9 


of  authority.  Thus  he  assumes  that  the  overwhelming  pre¬ 
sumption  must  be  against  miracles,  because  the  over¬ 
whelmingly  large  number  of  people  experience  the  un¬ 
broken  course  of  nature  and  do  not  experience  miracles. 

But  he  forgot  that  a  million  men  who  did  not  see  a 
miracle  might  be  of  less  evidential  value  than  one  man 
who  did.  An  Irishman  once  haled  before  the  court  for 
stealing  a  cow  said,  “Your  Honor,  I  can  produce  fifty 
men  who  did  not  see  me  do  it.” 

Even  John  Stuart  Mill,  though  he  modified  the  position 
by  pointing  out  both  flaws  in  the  argument  that  I  have 
mentioned,  yet  felt  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  prove 
a  miracle  because  the  weight  of  average  experience  would 
always  be  against  it.  But  did  he  not  forget  that  for  an 
exceptional  event  the  real  weight  must  be  with  the  ex¬ 
ceptional  witness?  Average  experience  is  always  trust¬ 
worthy  for  average  events,  but  seldom  trustworthy  for 
exceptional  events.  The  exceptional  man,  given  the  prop¬ 
er  moral  background,  must  outweigh  the  average  man 
in  the  judging  of  the  exceptional  event. 

Professor  Huxley  was  keen  enough  to  see  that  Hume’s 
argument  proved  too  much.  It  not  only  blocked  the 
miracle,  but  it  blocked  anything  new  or  unusual. 

The  weight  of  testimony  would  always  be  against  the 
discovery  of  the  North  Pole  or  the  discovery  of  a  new 
species  of  plant  by  Burbank.  It  therefore  blocked  evolu¬ 
tion  and  could  not  hold.  But  while  Huxley  admitted  that 
there  is  no  “must”  in  God,  and  that  the  question  of  mir¬ 
acles  was  wholly  one  of  sufficient  evidence,  yet  no  pos¬ 
sible  evidence  would  have  been  by  him  accounted  suf¬ 
ficient.  It  would  have  proven  only  that  the  event  wit¬ 
nessed  was  beyond  such  natural  laws  as  are  now  known. 


10 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


So  far  as  any  proper  conception  of  the  miracle  is  con¬ 
cerned,  it  was  accounted  impossible. 

For  the  Christian  theist  of  this  day,  and  in  the  light 
of  our  present  conception  of  God  and  the  universe,  the 
theory  that  miracles  are  impossible  is  scarcely  worthy  of 
serious  consideration.  Why  impossible?  Because  they 
are  a  violation  of  the  law  of  nature  ?  But  can  the  law  of 
nature  compel  our  God?  What  is  a  “law  of  nature?” 
Consider  it  apart  from  a  personality  back  of  it,  and  a  law 
cannot  do  anything,  never  has  done  anything,  and  never 
will  do  anything.  All  its  potency  is  in  the  person  which 
it  expresses.  If  you  think  a  law  can  do  anything  without 
a  person  back  of  it,  observe,  if  you  please,  certain  laws  on 
the  statute  books  of  some  of  our  commonwealths  today. 
The  term  “law  of  nature”  is  but  a  meaningless  abstrac¬ 
tion,  a  phrase  used  to  cover  the  utter  absence  of  any  in¬ 
telligible  thought  whatsoever,  unless  it  is  used  to  express 
the  habitual  ways  in  which  a  person  acts.  What  do  we 
know  about  laws  apart  from  persons?  We  do  not  see 
laws — we  see  sequences ;  we  see  one  thing  following  an¬ 
other  regularly,  and  we  assume  that  it  has  always  been 
that  way  and  always  will  be  that  way;  but  we  cannot 
demonstrate  our  assumptions.  Day  follows  night,  and 
night  follows  day ;  seasons  move  in  orderly  sequence ;  cer¬ 
tain  things  which  we  call  “effects”  follow  certain  things 
which  we  call  “causes ;”  but  we  call  them  thus  only  be¬ 
cause  we  are  more  or  less  gambling  that  things  will  keep 
on  acting  in  the  future  as  we  have  observed  them  to  act 
in  the  past.  As  Chesterton  has  observed,  “It  is  no  argu¬ 
ment  for  unalterable  law  (as  Huxley  fancied)  that  we 
count  on  the  ordinary  course  of  things.  We  do  not  count 
on  it;  we  bet  on  it.  We  risk  the  remote  possibility  of  a 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


ii 


miracle  as  we  do  that  of  a  poisoned  pancake  or  a  world- 
destroying  comet.  We  leave  it  out  of  account,  not  because 
it  is  a  miracle,  and  therefore  an  impossibility,  but  be¬ 
cause  it  is  a  miracle,  and  therefore  an  exception.” 

When  the  late  Senator  Allison  was  asked,  during  a 
drought,  if  it  would  not  certainly  rain,  he  replied  cau¬ 
tiously,  “It  always  has  heretofore.”  If  I  get  up  at  eight 
o’clock  three  hundred  and  sixty- four  days  in  the  year, 
and  on  the  three  hundred  and  sixty-fifth  day  get  up  at 
six,  that  would  not  be  impossible — it  would  be  an  excep¬ 
tion.  And  while  my  habits,  that  is,  the  law  of  my  nature, 
would  greatly  predispose  me  against  any  such  exception, 
even  in  this  case  it  would  by  no  means  be  an  impossibility. 
In  other  words,  when  we  have  caught  the  idea  that  a  law 
is  nothing  more  than  the  habitual  way  in  which  a  person 
acts,  we  realize  that  the  whole  question  is  this :  “Can  a 
person  be  bound  by  his  own  habits?”  Are  the  habits 
larger  and  stronger  than  the  person,  or  is  the  person 
really  larger  and  stronger  than  his  habits?  Let  us  admit 
that  in  the  specific  case  of  getting  up  at  six  in  the  morning 
the  habits  are  almost  stronger  than  the  person.  Many  a 
poor  drunkard  finds  that  his  habits  have  become  stronger 
than  his  personal  will.  But  he  is  not  normal;  he  is  not 
free.  God  is  normal  and  free  and  personal.  The  only 
real  and  ultimate  law  is  His  will  grounded  in  His  trans¬ 
cendent  nature.  That  is  the  only  final  test.  God  has  His 
habitual  way  of  doing  things,  to  be  sure.  But  if  even  a 
man  can  break  in  on  his  own  habits,  is  there  less  freedom 
in  God? 

Given  a  proper  insight  into  the  real  nature  of  law  as 
the  expression  of  the  personal  will  of  God,  the  idea  that 
miracles  are  a  violation  of  law  reduces  to  sheer  absurdity. 


12  THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 

The  only  possible  violation  of  law  would  be  that  which 
defied  God’s  will.  The  miracle  is  only  a  higher  and  more 
direct  and  exceptional  manifestation  of  that  will.  In 
fact,  the  size  of  a  man  will  be  judged  by  his  ability  to  do 
the  exceptional  thing  when  the  occasion  demands.  God 
is  the  Infinite.  He  is  the  God  of  the  unexpected. 

When  we  understand  that  all  activities  of  nature  rest 
back  on  God’s  will,  we  will  see  at  once  that  the  miracle 
presents  no  greater  essential  difficulty  than  the  ordinary 
course  of  events.  It  is  just  as  marvelous,  so  far  as  the 
mystery  and  difficulty  is  concerned,  for  God  to  turn  water 
into  wine  in  a  season  as  to  turn  water  into  wine  in  a  mo¬ 
ment.  There  is  no  difficulty  or  obstacle  in  the  latter  case 
which  is  not  met  and  overcome  in  the  former  as  well. 
There  is  no  time  in  God.  It  looks  more  difficult  to  u§ 
solely  because  we  have  been  accustomed  to  seeing  the 
wonder  done  in  a  season  and  have  not  been  accustomed  to 
seeing  it  done  in  a  moment.  Under  the  workings  of  the 
law  of  habit  we  continually  confuse  the  unusual  and  the 
impossible.  We  count  so  definitely  on  the  usual  and 
average  experience  that  the  exceptional  assumes  the  aspect 
of  the  impossible.  The  Titanic  could  not  go  down.  Such 
a  thing  had  never  been  known.  So  sail  ahead  full  speed 
and  dare  the  icebergs — it  was  impossible  to  sink  the  Ti¬ 
tanic  !  No,  not  impossible — only  unusual — and  the  un¬ 
usual  happened.  Why,  we  cannot  even  have  a  week  of 
rainy  days  without  concluding  that  dry  weather  is  well- 
nigh  impossible.  We  do  not  reason  out  such  a  conclu¬ 
sion,  but  we  feel  that  way.  Indeed,  such  are  the  predis¬ 
positions  of  habit  that  we  even  develop  a  dislike  of  the 
exceptional.  It  disturbs  our  calculations.  It  upsets  our 
wise  saws  and  modern  instances.  We  want  the  program 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


13 


to  go  by  a  fixed  routine  because  it  is  so  much  easier  to 
grasp  and  use  as  the  basis  of  some  beautiful  theory. 

Every  Greek  student  hates  the  irregular  verbs.  One 
would  infinitely  prefer  a  language  with  no  such  pitfalls 
in  it.  How  much  easier  to  keep  matters  straight  if  there 
had  never  been  any  exceptions !  The  college  boy  echoes 
with  a  full  heart  the  cry  that  Carlyle  puts  on  the  lips  of 
the  old  schoolmen,  “May  God  confound  you  for  your  The¬ 
ory  of  Irregular  Verbs !” 

Now  many  routine  minds,  possessed  of  a  desire  to  de¬ 
velop  a  theory  of  science  which  will  contain  the  whole 
cosmos,  dealing  for  years  with  the  material  study  of  un¬ 
varying  natural  sequences,  fall  into  the  grip  of  this  same 
law  of  habit.  It  seems  to  them  that  any  variation  or  un¬ 
usual  thing  in  nature  would  be  not  only  impossible,  but 
immensely  undesirable.  They  dislike  it,  they  hate  it  with 
the  rabid  hatred  which  mediocrity  bears  to  genius.  They 
hate  it  just  as  we  used  to  hate  the  irregular  verbs.  It 
breaks  up  their  settled  theories ;  it  makes  impossible  that 
snug  arrangement  of  labeled  and  classified  data  so  dear 
to  the  routine  mind.  We  assumed  that  the  Greek  lan¬ 
guage  existed  to  make  grammar  easy.  They  assume  that 
this  universe  exists  to  make  science  easy.  When  the 
exception  is  intimated,  the  heathen  rage  and  cry,  “May 
God  confound  you  for  your  Theory  of  Irregular  Verbs !” 
But  we  learned  at  last  that  grammar  was  only  an  incident 
to  the  great  intellectual  and  moral  and  spiritual  purpose 
of  the  noble  Greek  tongue.  And  the  routine  mind  may 
yet  learn  that  his  uniformities  and  laws  and  sequences 
and  necessities  and  orders  and  tendencies  are  only  an  in¬ 
cident  to  the  great  intellectual  and  moral  and  spiritual 
purpose  to  which  the  whole  creation  moves. 


14 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


The  second  class  of  thinkers  to  whom  Professor  Curtis 
refers  are  those  who  regard  the  miracle  not  as  impossible, 
but  as  improbable.  It  is  conceded  that  the  God  whose 
will  is  the  only  law  could  do.  the  exceptional  thing,  but 
would  He?  These  thinkers  believe  He  would  not.  “No 
whim  in  God,”  said  Theodore  Parker,  “ — therefore  no 
miracle  in  nature.”  It  is  inconsistent,  they  tell  us,  with 
the  dignity  of  God  as  displayed  in  the  unvarying  preci¬ 
sion  and  majestic  accuracy  of  uniform  natural  law,  to 
suppose  that  He  would  break  in  upon  this  splendidly 
planned  and  accurately  balanced  system  of  law  by  so 
much  as  the  variation  of  a  hair’s  breadth. 

Now  it  may  be  freely  conceded  that  there  is  a  certain 
dignity,  nay  a  certain  morality  even,  in  the  unvarying 
precision  of  nature.  Wordsworth  may  have  caught 
something  of  the  morality  which  had  its  expression  in  the 
splendid  mathematics  of  the  sky  when  he  sang : 

“Thou  dost  preserve  the  stars  from  wrong 
And  the  most  ancient  heavens,  through  Thee,  are  fresh 
and  strong.” 

But  let  us  not  forget  that,  while  there  may  be  moral 
dignity  in  precision  and  regularity  of  habit,  there  may  be 
even  greater  moral  dignity  in  the  breaking  in  upon  that 
habit,  if  the  moral  occasion  warrants  or  demands  it. 

There  is  a  dignity  and  even  a  business  morality  in 
the  routine,  let  us  say,  of  a  great  store.  We  are  im¬ 
pressed  with  the  clock-work  regularity  with  which  the 
building  is  opened  and  closed,  with  the  faultless  accuracy 
of  the  business  routine,  with  the  masterly  way  in  which 
the  clerks  are  marshalled  to  their  places  like  the  trained 
soldiers  of  an  army.  Now  the  office  boy  looks  up  to  that 
routine  as  something  vast  and  majestic  and  unbreakable. 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


15 


To  him  it  would  seem  as  though  the  world  were  ending 
if  the  store  did  not  open  and  close  on  schedule  time,  if  the 
daily  routine  did  not  go  on  its  way  like  the  perfectly  oiled 
works  of  a  great  clock.  But  the  son  of  the  owner  has  a 
different  point  of  view.  He  sees  that  the  routine  is  not 
an  end  in  itself,  because  he  knows  the  man  at  the  head  of 
that  routine,  not  as  a  mere  driver  of  a  machine,  but  as  a 
father.  And  he  knows  that  if  he  were  to  become  sick 
and  need  his  father,  that  father  would  smash  the  routine 
in  a  thousand  pieces  if  the  emergency  were  important 
enough. 

There  is  a  certain  dignity  and  impressiveness  in  the 
schedule  of  a  railway  system.  Also  there  is  morality  in  it 
to  the  traveling  public.  But  there  was  a  time  in  this 
country  when  every  train  and  every  streetcar  from  coast 
to  coast  was  ten  minutes  behind  time.  That  was  not  a 
stigma  on  railroading.  It  was  a  badge  of  honor.  For 
McKinley  was  dead,  and  as  loving  hands  carried  his 
body  to  its  long  rest  the  railroads  stopped  their  trains  in 
token  of  respect  to  his  memory.  Was  the  routine  dignity 
of  the  railroad  system  injured  by  the  moral  dignity  which 
introduced  an  exception  into  the  routine?  The  fact  is 
that  one  very  cogent  definition  of  freedom  and  power  in 
a  personality  is  its  ability  to  do  the  unaccustomed  thing  in 
this  way. 

Now  all  depends  upon  whether  you  consider  the  uni¬ 
verse  as  a  machine  shop  or  a  home.  Is  God  a  great  celes¬ 
tial  mechanic,  or  is  He  a  father?  We  hold  the  higher 
uniformity,  they  the  lower;  and  the  curious  paradox  is  in 
this,  that  men  who  assert  this  lower  mechanical  uniformity 
are  willing  to  violate  the  higher  and  moral  uniformity. 
Man  has  an  instinct  for  immortality,  and  if  that  instinct 


i6 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


were  false  it  would  imply  a  serious  break  in  the  great 
uniform  law  by  which  instinct  involves  corresponding 
reality.  And  yet  there  are  many  men  who  would  deny 
this  instinct,  who  will  insist  upon  the  lower  and  mechan¬ 
ical  uniformity  of  nature’s  routine.  The  uniformity  of 
the  higher  law  has  back  of  it  love,  and  that  of  the  lower 
law  has  back  of  it  only  mechanics.  And  the  man  who 
will  not  admit  that  the  routine  of  nature  was  ever  broken, 
yet  really,  in  his  heart,  hungers  for  something  that  will 
break  up  that  routine.  He  curses  the  universe  because  it 
is  so  hard  and  mechanical  and  unfeeling;  and  then  de¬ 
liberately  shuts  his  eyes  to  every  evidence  which  would 
convince  him  that  the  universe  is  anything  else. 

The  whole  question  reduces  to  the  query  as  to  whether 
God  is  a  God  of  love.  Surely  it  is  inconceivable  that  a 
loveless  universe  could  have  evolved  a  good  mother !  And 
if  God  is  love,  then  the  mechanical  dignity  of  mere  natural 
routine  is  lost  in  the  splendid  higher  dignity,  the  moral 
majesty,  of  the  love  of  God  manifested  in  the  exception 
to  the  routine.  If  we  admire  the  business  man  who  would 
break  up  his  routine  for  his  boy ;  if  we  honor  the  railroad 
men  who  put  every  train  in  the  country  behind  time;  if 
we  love  Lincoln  when  he  declared  in  substance  that  he 
would  violate  the  constitution  itself  to  save  the  Union 
and  free  the  slave;  shall  we  convict  the  great  God  of 
fickleness,  of  whims,  of  inconsistency,  when  He  changes 
His  habits  at  the  dictate  of  His  wonderful  love? 

The  supreme  miracles  of  the  Bible  were  always  wrought 
for  moral  purposes.  Jesus  was  not  unique  in  working 
miracles.  Others  have  done  so.  But  He  was  unique  in 
His  moral  attitude  toward  His  miracles — in  His  apprecia¬ 
tion  of  their  meaning  and  necessity.  He  never  conde- 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


1 7 


scended  to  the  supernatural  as  a  mere  wonder-worker. 
I  question  whether  He  even  relied  on  them  greatly  by  way 
of  credential.  It  is  at  least  true  in  modern  thinking  that 
His  moral  attitude  toward  the  miracles  is  far  more  con¬ 
vincing  to  us  than  the  miracles  themselves.  But  when  we 
have  caught  the  message  of  the  Bible,  the  supremacy  of 
the  moral  over  the  physical,  when  we  have  realized  the 
supreme  meaning  of  the  incarnation — that  something  is 
radically  wrong  with  humanity,  that  a  moral  crisis  of 
first  magnitude  faced  the  race ;  then  to  the  eye  of  the  child 
of  God  the  miracle  becomes  not  an  improbability,  but 
rather  takes  its  place  as  just  the  thing  we  should  expect. 
In  the  crisis,  under  all  the  circumstances,  we  would  have 
suspected  this  narrative  if  it  did  not  show  us  that  God  was 
as  disturbed  about  sin  as  we  were,  and  more  so.  That 
the  Almighty  Father  should  “sit  on  His  vast  and  solitary 
throne,  creating  worlds  to  make  eternity  less  burden¬ 
some  to  His  immense  existence  and  unparticipated  soli¬ 
tude/’  while  the  race  of  men  He  made  was  struggling  in 
the  awful  grip  of  human  sin,  seems  to  me  to  be  most 
grossly  improbable.  That  He  should  have  been  stirred 
even  to  the  point  of  breaking  up  His  accustomed  habits  for 
the  time  being,  seems  the  most  natural  and  believable 
thing  in  the  world.  And  it  will  become  so  to  most  men 
who  come  to  know  God  by  intimate  personal  experience. 

There  is  still  a  third  class  of  modern  thinkers  to  which 
we  now  turn.  They  are  those  who,  while  admitting  that 
what  has  gone  before  is  in  the  main  true,  yet  insist  that 
it  is  not  the  message  for  our  age.  Grant  that  miracles  are 
possible,  probable,  and  that  the  historical  evidence,  backed 
by  the  moral  considerations  and  the  psychological  demands 
of  the  situation,  is,  in  some  cases  at  least,  of  such  char- 


i8 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


acter  as  to  amount  to  a  demonstration.  Still,  say  these 
men,  miracles  are  at  the  best  non-strategic.  In  this  age 
they  are  a  weight  rather  than  a  wing  to  faith.  Let  us 
keep  them  in  the  background,  rely  on  moral  and  spiritual 
considerations,  and  leave  these  physical  .signs  to  the 
cruder  age  for  which  they  were  in  reality  intended. 

I  apprehend  that  these  thinkers  have  been  caught  by 
a  false  diagnosis  of  the  real  difficulty.  Primarily  the 
trouble  is  not  intellectual,  but  moral.  When  men  come  to 
catch  the  moral  relationship  and  realize  its  pre-eminence, 
the  intellectual  difficulties  vanish.  When  one  has  a  mir¬ 
acle  in  his  own  heart  he  is  not  staggered  by  a  miracle  in 
nature.  It  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  by 
toning  down  all  intellectual  difficulties  we  can  make  our 
message  more  attractive  or  effective  with  the  modern  man. 
If  he  comes  to  know  the  spiritual  change,  the  intellectual 
difficulties  vanish  of  themselves.  If  he  does  not  come  to 
know  the  spiritual  change,  all  the  logical  catering  and 
intellectual  trimming  in  the  world  will  not  avail  one  jot 
or  tittle  to  lead  him  to  the  kingdom.  Faith  grows  with 
the  demands  upon  it.  When  those  demands  are  attenu¬ 
ated,  it  shrivels  and  dies. 

“Human  things,”  says  Pascal,  “need  only  to  be  known, 
in  order  to  be  loved ;  but  divine  things  must  first  be  loved, 
in  order  to  be  known.”  In  regard  to  the  miracle  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  and  the  Unitarian  Church  are 
antipodal  the  one  to  the  other.  On  the  one  side  slavish 
and  superstitious  acceptance  of  the  supernatural.  On  the 
other,  an  absolute  elimination  of  it.  Let  the  records  of 
membership  show  which  has  the  larger  grip  on  men. 
When  the  demands  of  faith  become  attenuated  to  the 
point  of  Lincoln’s  soup  made  from  the  shadow  of  a  pigeon 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


19 


that  had  died  of  starvation,  it  may  attract  an  anemic  little 
coterie  of  dilettantes  and  intellectual  recluses,  but  for  the 
great  mass  of  men  it  will  have  no  appeal.  Strong  be¬ 
lievers  ask  for  bread,  not  stones  or  predigested  capsules. 
It  takes  great  tasks  to  make  great  men ;  and  the  faith  that 
overcomes  the  world  does  not  hedge  or  cringe,  but  con¬ 
fronts  the  Supreme  Mystery  like  Browning’s  Gram¬ 
marian  : 

“Was  it  not  great?  did  not  he  throw  on  God, 

(He  loves  the  burthen) — 

God’s  task  to  make  the  heavenly  period 
Perfect  the  earthen? 

Did  not  he  magnify  the  mind,  show  clear 
Just  what  it  all  meant? 

He  would  not  discount  life,  as  fools  do  here, 

Paid  by  instalment. 

He  ventured  neck  or  nothing — heaven’s  success 
Found,  or  earth’s  failure: 

‘Wilt  thou  trust  death  or  not?’  He  answered  ‘Yes! 
Hence  with  life’s  pale  lure!’” 

Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that  redemption  itself  is  one 
vast  miracle.  The  person  of  Christ  is  an  absolute  break 
in  the  routine  of  average  human  nature,  utterly  inex¬ 
plicable  by  any  natural  sequence  of  cause  and  effect  either 
in  the  field  of  heredity  or  that  of  environment.  The 
history  of  the  Bible  has  been  miraculous.  The  whole 
course  of  redemption  is  an  extraordinary  thing.  A  re¬ 
ligion  without  the  miraculous  is  Hamlet  sans  Hamlet. 
Conversion  itself  is  the  best  attested  fact  of  modern  life. 
,And  it  is  essentially  of  the  miraculous  order.  “The  wind 
bloweth  where  it  will,  and  thou  hearest  the  voice  thereof, 
but  knowest  not  whence  it  cometh,  and  whither  it  goeth: 
so  is  every  one  that  is  born  of  the  Spirit.”  Professor 


20 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


William  James  was  the  first  modern  man  of  science  on 
whom  it  appears  to  have  dawned  that  a  study  of  religion 
meant  a  study  of  what  went  on  in  the  souls  of  religious 
men.  Harold  Begbie,  in  his  really  remarkable  series  of 
books  on  conversion,  has  furnished  data  which  every  man 
who  discusses  the  supernatural  is  bound  to  face.  I  am 
weary  of  soul  with  the  cheap  assumption  that  science  is 
all  on  the  side  of  the  red  tape  minds.  No  man  can  be  in¬ 
tellectually  honest  who  dogmatizes  on  miracles  without 
a  frank  study  of  conversion  in  modern  life.  And  his 
verdict  will  be  that  of  Daniel  Webster  on  the  change 
which  came  into  the  life  of  a  hardened  old  sinner,  one 
John  Colby,  of  whom  the  great  statesman  spoke  to  his 
friend  John  Taylor.  “Well,  John  Taylor,  miracles  happen 
in  these  latter  days  as  well  as  in  the  days  of  old.”  “What 
now,  Squire?”  asked  Taylor.  “Why,”  replied  Webster, 
“John  Colby  has  become  a  Christian.  If  that  is  not  a 
miracle,  what  is?” 


II 


HOW  IT  STRIKES  A  CONTEMPORARY 

The  suggestive  title  of  one  of  Mr.  Browning’s  poems 
furnishes  the  angle  from  which  we  are  now  to  view  the 
question  of  the  miracle.  “How  It  Strikes  a  Contempo¬ 
rary”  is  not  the  formula  by  which  an  abstract  judgment  is 
to  be  crystallized,  but  it  does  present  the  exceedingly 
practical  criterion  which  determines  the  actual  acceptance 
of  an  abstraction  and  its  incorporation  into  concrete  and 
vivid  belief.  How  does  the  miracle  strike  the  contem¬ 
porary  mind?  What  of  the  supernatural  today?  How 
does  it  fare  through  the  shifting  and  sifting  processes 
of  twentieth  century  thinking?  Granted  a  spiritual  uni¬ 
verse  and  not  a  mechanical  one,  granted  a  great  All- 
Father  who  controls  physical  phenomena  for  moral  ends, 
a  fairly  water-tight  argument  for  the  miraculous  may  be 
constructed.  But  will  it  have  any  real  and  practical  grip 
on  that  oft-quoted  and  awesome  court  of  appeal,  so 
vociferous  and  dogmatic  and  yet  withal  so  disturbingly 
erratic,  which  we  call  “the  modern  mind?” 

Speaking  in  general  terms  the  answer  to  this  question 
might  be  put  in  a  single  sentence.  As  compared  to  a 
generation  ago  it  is  now  easier  to  accept  the  marvelous  in¬ 
cidents  of  the  Bible  but  harder  to  assign  a  definitely  mi¬ 
raculous  explanation  to  them.  In  Mr.  Huxley’s  day  the 
tendency  of  many  critics  was  to  assume,  as  he  himself 
somewhere  stated,  the  alternative  that  the  supernatural 


21 


22 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


events  of  the  gospel  narratives  were  either  genuine  mir¬ 
acles  or  else  that  they  did  not  occur  at  all.  We  have  now 
come  to  a  time  when  his  successors  are  far  more  willing 
to  admit  that  these  events  might  have  occurred,  but  when 
along  with  this  admission  they  would  assign  for  them 
some  unknown  natural  force  as  a  sufficient  explanation. 

This  attitude  has  arisen  as  our  minds  have  expanded 
more  and  more  to  the  marvels  of  modern  discovery  in  that 
zone  of  mystery  where  spirit  and  matter  meet.  The  proph¬ 
ecy  of  William  James  has  been  realized  in  that  a  gener¬ 
ation  which  explained  the  psychical  by  the  physical  has 
been  followed  by  a  generation  which  is  tending  more  and 
more  to  explain  the  physical  by  the  psychical.  Thinking 
which  was  on  a  materialistic  tack  swung  sharply  over  to 
a  new  sense  of  invisible  wonders  manifest  through  an 
utterly  unknown  medium  which  for  want  of  a  better  name 
has  been  called  the  ether.  The  reduction  of  matter  from 
atom  to  electron,  from  the  concept  of  solidarity  to  that 
of  energy ;  the  amazing  revelations  of  the  radio ;  the  deep¬ 
ening  conviction  that  spirit  often  masters  matter;  have 
all  tended  toward  an  easier  tolerance  of  many  wonders 
in  the  Bible.  Sir  Conan  Doyle,  for  instance,  would  read¬ 
ily  accept  the  detailed  narrative  concerning  the  Day  of 
Pentecost  if  instead  of  an  “outpouring  of  the  Spirit” 
you  talked  about  “psychical  manifestations.”  Mental 
ascendancy  over  material  media  is  increasingly  evident 
even  to  that  bromidic  individual  known  as  the  “man  on 
the  street.”  Whether  in  the  hands  of  charlatans  like 
Madame  Blavatsky  and  Madame  Eddy,  or  of  earnest  gen¬ 
tlemen  like  the  Emmanuel  advocates  and  Monsieur  Coue, 
we  are  blundering  once  and  again  upon  mysterious  live 
wires  of  unknown  spiritual  force.  These  occasional  con- 


HOW  IT  STRIKES  A  CONTEMPORARY 


23 


tacts  bring  unwonted  shocks  to  those  confirmed  dogma¬ 
tists  who  had  rested  so  comfortably  on  the  old  scientific 
orthodoxy  of  hard  mechanical  causation,  joe  Jefferson, 
the  loved  actor,  summed  up  the  new  attitude  toward  the 
things  not  dreamt  of  in  our  mechanistic  philosophies.  His 
friend  and  lifelong  companion,  Grover  Cleveland,  with 
that  dogged,  persistent,  hard-headed  practicality  of  his, 
utterly  refused  even  to  consider  the  evidence  for  certain 
alleged  marvelous  happenings  in  the  invisible  empire  of 
ether.  “Tell  that,  to  Jefferson;  he’ll  believe  anything,” 
said  the  former  President.  And  Jefferson  replied,  “Of 
course  I  will.  The  world  is  full  of  wonders  and  another 
more  or  less  does  not  surprise  me.” 

Whatever  their  limitations  and  failures,  the  psychic 
group  of  investigators  have  at  least  jarred  the  complacent 
egotism  of  the  old  positivists  and  the  contemporary  fol¬ 
lowers  of  Ernst  Haeckel.  At  a  minimum  evaluation 
they  have  stimulated  a  new  bent  of  the  modern  mind 
toward  the  unseen  world.  It  is  too  late  in  the  day  to 
laugh  out  of  court  such  men  as  Myers  and  Hodgden  and 
Crooks  and  Lodge  and  Barrett  and  Flammarion  and  Maet¬ 
erlinck  and  Hyslop  and  Chesterton  and  Lang  and  Tark- 
ington  and  Doyle  and  a  host  of  others  with  equal  scientific, 
philosophical  and  literary  standing.  Let  us  grant  that 
thus  far  psychical  investigation  must  receive  the  Scotch 
verdict,  “Not  proven.”  I  fancy  it  is  the  Scotch  verdict 
only  because  the  issues  are  so  tremendous,  the  inferences 
so  solemn  and  heart-shattering,  that  we  do  not  dare  rest 
on  evidence  which  would  be  fairly  conclusive  in  decisions 
of  lesser  moment.  Hundreds  of  men  have  been  hung  on 
evidence  inferior  to  that  which  science  itself  has  pro¬ 
duced  for  some  sort  of  invisible  life  capable  of  interest  in 


24 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


and  interference  with  human  affairs.  Make  all  possible 
allowance  for  fraud,  collusion,  and  coincidence,  still  there 
exists  the  “unexplainable  residuum.”  Every  year  widens 
the  area  of  data  which  compels  the  hypothesis  either  of 
actual  communication  with  human  spirits  across  the  veil 
or  of  psychical  phenomena  between  human  spirits  operat¬ 
ing  entirely  independent  of  mechanical  causation.  In 
either  case  the  results  are  proving  equally  fatal  to  the 
theory  of  hard  material  uniformity.  And  in  many  cases 
the  explanation  of  actual  intercourse  across  the  veil  would 
probably  be  the  more  natural  and  unforced  hypothesis — 
if — if  only  we  dared ! 

The  time  has  come  for  Christian  thinking  to  see  in  the 
honest,  reverent  psychical  investigator  a  friend  and  not  a 
foe.  Mercenary  necromancy  has  always  been  a  rotten, 
reeking  thing,  justly  interdicted  in  the  Bible.  In  modern 
life  it  smells  to  high  heaven  with  the  odors  of  the  pit. 
To  practice  foul  fraud  on  broken  hearts  for  filthy  gain 
is  a  wickedness  that  should  put  to  shame  the  traitors 
whom  Dante  found  in  the  ninth  circle  of  the  Inferno. 
But  as  we  would  not  have  Christianity  judged  by  the 
frauds  and  crimes  committed  in  its  name,  we  dare  not  on 
an  analogous  basis  condemn  the  honest  and  reverent 
scientific  investigator  who  seeks  to  confirm  in  the  white 
light  of  reason  that  life  immortal  to  which  we  cling  by 
faith  “amid  the  encircling  gloom”  of  modern  mechanistic 
thinking.  The  reverent  psychic  investigator  is  like  our¬ 
selves  the  champion  of  a  spiritual  universe.  “Les  amis  de 
mes  amis  sont  mes  amis For  myself,  I  shall  waste  no 
blows  on  any  man  who  makes  it  easier  to  believe  in  a 
plastic  world  of  spirit  rather  than  a  hard  world  of  mech¬ 
anism,  and  in  a  God  who  is  not  a  Master  Mechanic,  but 


HOW  IT  STRIKES  A  CONTEMPORARY 


25 


a  Father,  in  whose  train  wait  ministering  angels,  and 
around  whose  throne  the  cherubic  host  sings  everlastingly 
devout  and  holy  songs.  I  will  risk  bad  spirits  for  the  as¬ 
surance  that  there  are  good  ones.  If  demons  exist,  they 
can  harm  no  one  without  His  consent.  But  if  materialism 
were  the  real  philosophy  of  life,  then  all  spirits  alike  are 
swallowed  up  in  darkness  and  despair.  As  Mr.  Hereward 
Carrington  has  said  in  a  recent  review,  “It  is  curious  to 
note  that  spiritism  merely  offers  scientific  evidence  for  the 
existence  and  reality  of  a  spiritual  world — for  which  all 
other  religions  are  likewise  contending.  It  is  easy  enough 
to  see  why  the  materialist  should  attack  spiritualism.  It 
runs  counter  to  his  cherished  and  preconceived  views  of 
things ;  and  rather  than  give  these  things  up  and  ac¬ 
knowledge  that  he  might  be  wrong  he  prefers  to  ignore 
and  deny  the  facts !  But  why  religion  should  pour  out  the 
vials  of  its  wrath  upon  any  attempted  proof  of  the  very 
phenomena  it  is  teaching,  has  always  been  an  unintelligible 
paradox  to  the  reviewer.”  And  it  may  be  added  that 
by  a  curious  mental  paradox  a  late  noted  theologian  wrote 
a  book  proving  that  you  are  not  a  good  Christian  if  you 
deny  psychic  manifestation  between  the  years  1500  B.  C. 
and  100  A.  D.,  and  then  proving  that  you  are  not  a  good 
Christian  if  you  admit  these  manifestations  at  any  other 
period  of  the  world's  history  whatsoever! 

But  why  confine  the  miraculous  to  the  historic  period 
of  the  Bible  canon?  If  the  moral  occasion  is  present  why 
not  a  miracle  today?  Of  course  it  must  be  remembered 
that  these  reversals  of  nature's  routine  have  been  mani¬ 
fest  only  at  some  extraordinary  crisis  in  the  moral  history 
of  the  race.  There  were  hundreds  of  years  during  Bible 
times  when  there  was  no  “open  vision.”  The  old  idea  of 


26 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


evolution  by  slow,  gradual  and  imperceptible  progress  has 
given  way  to  the  new  conception  of  forward  movements 
by  leaps  and  crises.  It  now  appears  characteristic  of 
both  natural  and  moral  history  that  there  should  be  long 
periods  of  comparative  quiescence  followed  by  some  new 
crisis  marked  by  a  fresh  outflow  of  divine  energy.  These 
colossal  emergencies,  when  a  thousand  years  are  as  one  day 
and  one  day  as  a  thousand  years,  these  extraordinary 
moral  situations  are  the  background  of  the  supernatural. 
Soldiers  tell  us  about  the  bitter  horror  of  the  front  line 
trenches,  and  whisper  of  a  White  Comrade  who  appeared 
to  soothe  and  sustain.  Well,  perhaps  he  did.  Why  not? 
Heineman,  the  publisher,  gave  a  dinner  to  the  late  lament¬ 
ed  Shackleton  before  his  last  fatal  voyage  to  the  dread¬ 
ful  South  Seas.  And  in  the  course  of  that  dinner, 
before  a  company  of  noted  guests,  this  hard-headed  practi¬ 
cal  English  explorer  said,  “I  know  that  during  that  long 
and  racking  march  of  thirty-six  hours  over  the  un¬ 
named  mountains  and  glaciers  of  South  Georgia  it  seemed 
to  me  we  were  four  and  not  three.  I  said  nothing  to  my 
companions  on  that  point,  but  afterwards  Worsley  said 
to  me,  ‘Boss,  I  had  a  curious  feeling  on  the  march  that 
there  was  another  person  with  us.’  ”  And  perhaps  there 
was  a  fourth,  even  as  in  the  burning  fiery  furnace,  so 
in  the  bitter  arctic  desolation.  Who  shall  say?  At  least 
who  shall  deny?  Shall  we  curse  this  hard  universe  be¬ 
cause  Shackleton,  in  his  bitter  hour  of  need,  was  left 
alone;  and  then  shut  our  eyes  to  any  possible  testimony 
that  he  may  not  have  been  left  alone? 

Of  course  such  testimony  can  never  be  intellectually 
coercive.  The  force  of  its  impact  upon  any  investigator 
will  depend  largely  upon  his  own  inner  life,  upon  his 


HOW  IT  STRIKES  A  CONTEMPORARY 


27 


character  and  his  experience.  And  the  testimony  which 
the  Bible  brings  to  an  invisible  spiritual  world  sometimes 
breaking  through  the  barriers  of  sense,  will  meet  accept¬ 
ance  or  rejection  not  by  any  possible  critical  evaluation 
of  the  testimony,  but  largely  by  the  subjective  attitude  of 
the  observer.  We  have  all  had  certain  subnormal  mo¬ 
ments  when  mechanical  negations  gripped  us  and  would 
not  let  us  go.  In  our  better,  truer  experiences,  however, 
when  physical  health  was  normal  and  the  storm  and  stress 
passed  by,  the  inner  life  instinctively  but  none  the  less 
surely  reaches  out  toward  spiritual  reality,  and  will  not 
be  denied.  When  the  lamp  of  vitality  burns  low  then 
the  pitiless  grasp  of  physical  routine  hangs  over  the  soul 
like  a  pall.  But  with  restored  mental  and  physical  elastic¬ 
ity  the  verdict  of  materialism  seems  abnormal  and  wrong 
and  impossible.  As  Professor  James  said,  when  we  are 
normal  we  must  reply  to  fatalism  and  pessimism  in  a 
single  word,  “Bosh.” 

It  must  be  freely  admitted,  of  course,  that  many  wonders 
in  the  Bible  narrative  are  not  miracles  in  the  strict  sense 
of  the  definitions  which  we  have  proposed  in  this  dis¬ 
cussion.  Yet  even  though  reducible  to  some  form  of 
natural  process,  it  is  for  the  most  part  a  process  so  sudden 
and  hidden  as  to  be  entirely  beyond  human  wisdom  and 
power,  unaided  by  divine  intervention.  They  are,  in  a 
word,  special  providences  of  so  striking  a  character  as  to 
furnish  convincing  proofs  of  divine  intervention  for  moral 
ends.  But  I  would  file  a  caveat  against  the  presumption 
that  because  a  large  area  of  Bible  wonders  are  non-mirac- 
ulous  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term,  all  should  be  in¬ 
cluded  in  the  same  category.  The  most  dangerous  think¬ 
ing  in  the  world  is  that  which  makes  a  rule  estop  its  ex¬ 
ceptions. 


28 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


Says  Mr.  Chesterton :  “The  real  trouble  with  this  world 
of  ours  is  not  that  it  is  an  unreasonable  world,  nor  even 
that  it  is  a  reasonable  one.  The  commonest  kind  of 
trouble  is  that  it  is  nearly  reasonable,  but  not  quite.  Life 
is  not  an  illogicality;  yet  it  is  a  trap  for  logicians.  It 
looks  just  a  little  more  mathematical  and  regular  than  it 
is ;  its  exactitude  is  obvious,  but  its  inexactitude  is  hidden ; 
its  wildness  lies  in  wait.  I  give  one  coarse  instance  of 
what  I  mean.  Suppose  some  mathematical  creature  from 
the  moon  were  to  reckon  up  the  human  body;  he  would 
at  once  see  that  the  essential  thing  about  it  was  that  it  was 
duplicate.  A  man  is  two  men,  he  on  the  right  exactly 
resembling  him  on  the  left.  Having  noted  that  there  was 
an  arm  on  the  right  and  one  on  the  left,  a  leg  on  the  right 
and  one  on  the  left,  he  might  go  farther  and  still  find 
on  each  side  the  same  number  of  fingers,  the  same  number 
of  toes,  twin  eyes,  twin  ears,  twin  nostrils,  and  even 
twin  lobes  of  the  brain.  At  last  he  would  take  it  as  a  law : 
and  then,  where  he  found  a  heart  on  one  side,  would  de¬ 
duce  that  there  was  another  heart  on  the  other.  And 
just  then,  where  he  most  felt  he  was  right,  he  would  be 
wrong. ...  Now,  actual  insight  or  inspiration  is  best 
tested  by  whether  it  guesses  these  hidden  malformations 
or  suprises.  If  our  mathematician  from  the  moon  saw 
the  two  arms  and  the  two  ears,  he  might  deduce  the  two 
shoulder-blades  and  the  two  halves  of  the  brain,  but  if  he 
guessed  that  the  man’s  heart  was  in  the  right  place,  then 
I  should  call  him  something  more  than  a  mathematician. 
Now,  this  is  exactly  the  claim  which  I  have  since  come  to 
propound  for  Christianity.  Not  merely  that  it  deduces 
logical  truths,  but  that  when  it  suddenly  becomes  illogical, 
it  has  found,  so  to  speak,  an  illogical  truth.  It  not  only 


HOW  IT  STRIKES  A  CONTEMPORARY 


29 


goes  right  about  things,  but  it  goes  wrong,  if  one  may  say 
so,  exactly  where  the  things  go  wrong.  Its  plan  suits  the 
secret  irregularities,  and  expects  the  unexpected.  It 
is  simple  about  the  simple  truth;  but  it  is  stubborn  about 
the  subtle  truth.  It  will  admit  that  a  man  has  two  hands, 
it  will  not  admit  the  obvious  deduction  that  he  has  two 
hearts ....  Whenever  we  feel  there  is  something  odd 
in  Christian  theology,  we  shall  generally  find  that  there  is 
something  odd  in  the  truth.” 

I  must  therefore  protest  against  the  notion  that  because 
you  have  found  an  easy  natural  explanation  for  some 
Bible  wonders  you  have  accounted  for  them  all.  There 
are  in  the  gospels,  for  instance,  roundly  speaking,  some¬ 
thing  like  forty-six  events  which  may  be  set  down  as  be¬ 
yond  the  natural  order.  The  record  clearly  goes  back  to 
the  earliest  sources  of  Mark  and  to  the  earliest  sources 
of  Luke.  Attempts  to  explain  away  these  records  upon  a 
natural  basis  have  been  pure  conjectures.  They  have  not 
been  intellectually  honest,  but  only  attempts  to  read  into 
the  narrative  something  which  no  plain  man  would  find 
in  it  unless  he  approached  it  with  an  a  priori  prejudice. 
At  least  fourteen  of  these  wonders  are  attested  by  bodies 
of  men  greater  or  smaller  in  size.  In  the  brevity  of  the 
time  which  elapsed  between  the  event  and  the  written 
record,  in  the  character  of  the  witnesses,  in  their  sobriety, 
and  even  in  their  hardness  of  heart,  in  the  fact  that  then 
as  now  there  were  critical  Sadducees  who  made  these 
stories  run  the  gauntlet  of  skepticism  from  the  very  be¬ 
ginning,  the  testimony  crystallizes  in  a  form  diametrically 
opposed  to  the  typical  myth. 

Moreover,  these  miracles  are  beautifully  consonant 
with  the  character  of  Christ,  and  in  a  fine  and  noble  moral 


30 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


setting.  They  are  characterized  by  an  almost  uncanny 
self-restraint,  most  often  followed  by  injunctions  of 
silence.  They  are  never  theatrical,  never  “staged,”  but 
were  “surprised”  out  of  the  Master  by  the  impulse  of  His 
love.  The  pages  of  the  gospels  are  crowded  with  naive, 
undesigned  and  indirect  reference  to  these  miracles.  Four¬ 
teen  times  Jesus  himself  refers  to  them  indirectly.  Six 
times  the  people  refer  to  them.  Four  times  the  priests 
make  reference  to  them.  Fifteen  times  the  evangelists 
refer  to  them  indirectly. 

They  are  a  necessity  to  the  explanation  of  the  history 
of  that  period.  The  disciples,  overwhelmed  in  disgrace 
and  shame  with  the  common  malefactor’s  death  of  their 
Lord,  are  suddenly  transformed  into  unconquerable 
heroes  thrilling  with  irresistible  confidence  and  joy.  A 
miracle  would  explain  this.  Without  it  we  face  a  hope¬ 
less  enigma.  To  estimate  this  evidence  we  must  further 
consider  the  sober  sincerity  of  the  narrative,  utterly  im¬ 
possible  either  to  a  forger  or  a  fanatic;  the  amazing 
uniqueness  of  Jesus’  character,  as  impossible  of  imagina¬ 
tion  as  of  imitation ;  the  history  and  literature  of  cen¬ 
turies  past  which  had  related  themselves  to  a  great  mirac¬ 
ulous  outcome  and  which  would  be  meaningless  if  that 
consummation  were  false;  the  later  history  of  the  world 
which  the  late  Senator  Cushman  K.  Davis  declared  abso¬ 
lutely  demanded  a  belief  in  the  supreme  miracle  of  the 
resurrection,  or  else  left  the  philosophy  of  the  last  two 
thousand  years  an  unexplainable  jumble.  All  these  must 
be  evaluated.  To  some  men’s  minds  they  will  bulk 
largely;  in  others  they  will  seem  only  mystical  moon¬ 
shine.  “The  multitude  therefore,  that  stood  by,  and 
heard  it,  said  that  it  had  thundered :  others  said,  An  angel 


HOW  IT  STRIKES  A  CONTEMPORARY 


31 


hath  spoken  to  him.”  As  two  thousand  years  ago,  so  to¬ 
day,  materialism  will  analyze  the  thunder,  and  spiritual 
experience  will  be  tuned  to  hear  the  voice. 

Through  it  all  runs  the  immense  probability  that  God 
will  reveal  Himself  in  answer  to  the  longings  of  men. 
And  that  probability  weighs  today  as  never  before.  For 
with  all  our  frivolity  and  our  selfishness  and  our  hardness 
of  heart,  men  do  long  for  Him  in  this  modern  age,  and 
cry,  “My  soul  thirsteth  for  God,  for  the  living  God.” 
Says  Mr.  George  Bernard  Shaw,  “The  Church  has  failed 
infamously,  but  just  at  present  there  are  probably  more 
people  who  feel  that  in  Christ  is  the  only  hope  of  the 
world  than  there  ever  were  before  in  the  lifetime  of  men 
now  living.”  And  the  Christ  for  whom  the  world  longs 
is  the  miraculous  Christ,  not  the  pious  young  Jew,  de¬ 
feated  and  impotent,  whom  blind  rationalism  pictures.  If 
Christ  be  not  risen  he  is  as  helpless  as  all  the  rest  of  us. 
Said  the  late  Franklin  K.  Lane,  that  noble-minded  states¬ 
man  whose  public  service  embodied  Christlike  ideals  for 
which  he  longed  pathetically  but  could  never  reach  in¬ 
tellectually :  “The  only  miracle  that  I  care  about  is  the 
resurrection.  If  we  live  again,  we  have  reason  for  living 
now.”  On  that  great  central  miracle  hang  all  our  social 
progress  and  all  our  hopes  of  a  better  civilization.  Only 
the  risen  Christ  can  cope  with  the  wrongs  and  shames  of 
a  sunken  world.  Only  the  risen  Christ  can  give  us  cour¬ 
age  to  face  the  unexplored  country. 

“Because  I  know  the  spark 
Of  God  hath  no  eclipse, 

Now  Death  and  I  embark 
And  sail  into  the  dark 
With  laughter  on  our  lips.” 


Ill 


PRAYER  AND  EFFICIENCY 

Text:  The  supplication  of  a  righteous  man  availeth  much  in  its 
working. — James  5:16. 

The  most  significant  thing  about  the  teachings  of 
Jesus  concerning  prayer  is  that  He  never  argued  for  it, 
but  always  assumed  it.  He  never  said,  “If  ye  pray,” 
but  rather,  “When  ye  pray.”  He  never  taught  that  men 
should  pray  whether  they  will  or  not,  but  rather  that  they 
will  pray  whether  they  should  or  not.  He  recognized  the 
outreach  and  the  uprush  of  the  soul  toward  God  as  an 
instinct  deeper  and  larger  than  logic,  an  instinct  so  uni¬ 
versal,  so  spontaneous,  and  so  compelling  that  it  needed 
not  so  much  justification  as  direction.  He  saw,  as  Renan 
put  it,  that,  fundamentally,  men  are  incurably  religious, 
and  that  no  matter  how  this  deep  instinct  of  the  human 
soul  may  be  thwarted,  checked,  frozen  out  or  fattened 
out,  it  can  never  be  entirely  destroyed. 

In  sober  truth  one  might  paraphrase  a  favorite  epi¬ 
gram  of  Mr.  Lincoln  and  say  that  some  men  pray  always 
and  all  men  pray  some  time :  or  at  least  that  many  men 
pray  habitually,  most  men  pray  occasionally,  and  practic¬ 
ally  all  men  will  pray  in  a  pinch.  It  is  related  of  David 
Hume  that  coming  home  one  night  he  fell  into  a  bog, 
and  entreated  an  old  lady  who  happened  to  be  passing  by 
to  help  him  out.  She  had  known  David  all  her  life,  and 
agreed  to  assist  him  upon  one  condition,  namely,  that  he 


32 


PRAYER  AND  EFFICIENCY 


33 


should  say  the  Lord’s  Prayer.  The  story  goes  that  the 
celebrated  Scotch  doubter  did  repeat  the  prayer  with  con¬ 
siderable  unction,  whatever  may  have  been  the  motives 
back  of  its  use.  And  there  come  times  in  the  life  of  the 
stoutest  atheist,  even  though  he  has  shouted  from  the 
housetops  the  reckless  defiance  of  Faust, — 

“Neither  scruples  nor  doubts  come  now  to  smite  me, 

Nor  hell  nor  devil  can  longer  affright  me,” — 

when  he  is  impelled  by  a  supreme  sense  of  need  and  a 
compelling  inner  urge  to  lift  his  despairing  cry  to  the  very 
God  whom  he  has  mocked  and  flouted.  You  tell  me  a 
man  is  an  atheist,  and  in  reply  I  ask  you,  “When?”  Do 
you  remember  that  dramatic  passage  in  Victor  Hugo’s 
story  “Ninety-Three,”  when  the  ship  was  well-nigh 
wrecked  in  the  storm  and  the  dark  by  the  unloosing  of 
the  monster  cannon  which  careened  around  its  deck? 
And  the  lieutenant  said  to  the  captain,  “Chevalier,  do 
you  believe  in  God?”  “Yes — no,  sometimes.”  “During  a 
tempest?”  “Yes,  and  in  moments  like  this.”  “God  alone 
can  save  us  from  this.” 

And  what  the  great  artist  thus  depicts,  the  humblest 
pastor  knows  as  a  fact  of  commonplace  experience.  Men 
who  under  serene  and  untroubled  skies  have  vaunted 
their  own  self-sufficiency  and,  in  the  phrase  of  Comte, 
have  bowed  God  from  the  frontiers  of  the  universe  with 
polite  recognition  of  past  favors  but  as  no  longer  neces¬ 
sary,  come  in  periods  of  storm  and  stress  to  the  place 
where  they  must  either  invite  Him  back  or  confront  in¬ 
sanity. 

“  ‘There  is  no  God,’  the  foolish  saith, 

But  none,  ‘There  is  no  sorrow’; 

And  nature  oft  the  cry  of  faith, 


34 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


In  bitter  need  will  borrow. 

Eyes  which  the  preacher  could  not  school 
By  wayside  graves  are  raised, 

And  lips  say,  ‘God  be  pitiful,' 

Who  ne’er  said,  ‘God  be  praised !’  ” 

Now  the  logic  of  Jesus  is  perfectly  simple.  If  this  is 
the  great  emergency  recourse  of  all  men,  the  business  of  a 
wise  soul  is  to  become  so  schooled  in  its  use  that 
when  the  emergency  comes  he  may  know  how  to  get 
the  most  out  of  it.  I  remember  very  well  how  the  patient 
gentleman  who  taught  me  to  drive  an  automobile  refused 
to  trust  me  alone  in  the  crowded  streets  of  a  great  city 
until  I  had  reached  the  point  where  it  became  instinctive 
to  do  the  right  thing  in  an  emergency.  To  Jesus,  prayer 
was  not  a  mere  pious  exercise ;  it  was  an  efficient  power 
to  be  mastered  and  used.  Its  mastery  required  constant 
practice.  Therefore  we  were  to  use  it  habitually.  “Pray 
without  ceasing.”  While  there  were  social  forms  of 
prayer,  fundamentally  it  was  an  individual  communion 
between  the  soul  and  God,  and  we  must  therefore  ac¬ 
custom  ourselves  to  privacy  in  praying.  “Enter  into 
thine  inner  chamber.”  It  is  an  infinitely  delicate  act  and 
must  not  be  distracted.  Therefore  we  must  study  the 
art  of  detachment.  “Shut  the  door  behind  thee.”  Not 
any  material  door  necessarily.  To  “shut  the  door”  means 
developing  the  capacity  to  bar  out  that  which  might  dis¬ 
tract  our  communion  with  God.  Witness  the  despairing 
cry  of  Hamlet’s  uncle: 

“My  words  fly  up,  my  thoughts  remain  below; 

W ords  without  thoughts  never  to  heaven  go.” 

Then  we  are  to  study  concentration  in  prayer.  “Pray  to 
thy  Father  who  is  in  secret.”  The  most  difficult  and  yet 


PRAYER  AND  EFFICIENCY 


35 


the  most  blessed  practice  imaginable  is  to  develop  an  abil¬ 
ity  for  communion  with  an  invisible  friend  and  helper, 
learning  to  say,  “whom  not  having  seen  ye  love.”  More¬ 
over,  Jesus  at  a  single  stroke  clears  away  much  popular 
fallacy  about  unanswered  prayer,  for  he  promises  not  so 
much  answer  as  “recompense.”  “Thy  Father  who  seeth 
in  secret  shall  recompense  thee.”  Much  of  our  difficulty 
about  unanswered  prayer  comes  through  our  expectation 
of  an  outcome  in  the  exact  and  concrete  terms  of  our  ask¬ 
ing.  What  is  really  promised  may  not  at  all  be  in  the 
exact  and  concrete  terms  of  the  asking,  but  in  a  spiritual 
equivalent,  a  compensation.  Paul  prayed  that  his  thorn  in 
the  flesh  might  be  removed,  and  his  prayer  was  answered 
by  recompense.  “My  grace  is  sufficient  for  thee.”  This 
is  not  to  say  that  prayers  are  never  answered  in  the  con¬ 
crete  terms  of  the  asking.  But  it  is  to  say  that  it  would 
be  folly  to  limit  our  thought  of  the  efficiency  of  prayer 
to  these  concrete  answers.  They  are  only  the  smallest 
segment  of  the  great  results  that  follow  on  the  trained 
use  of  this  staggering  spiritual  power.  It  brings  results 
exceeding  abundantly  above  all  that  we  are  able  to  ask  or 
even  to  think.  “The  supplication  of  a  righteous  man 
availeth  much  in  its  working.”  And  a  free  paraphrase 
might  still  further  bring  out  the  full  strength  of  the  orig¬ 
inal — “The  prayer  of  a  righteous  man  is  exceedingly 
powerful  in  its  efficiency.” 

Well,  what  does  it  accomplish  ?  Let  us  be  concrete  and 
let  us  be  frank. 

First  of  all,  undoubtedly  prayer  does  something  in  us. 
Men  of  all  shades  of  belief  and  unbelief  have  admitted 
this.  Unbelievers  have  called  it  self-hypnotism,  and  to 
some  believers  it  represents  the  highest  and  truest  and 


36 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


perhaps  the  only  efficient  result  of  prayer.  But  however 
we  view  it,  the  fact  remains  certain  that  the  habit  of  fel¬ 
lowship  with  God  will  bring  poise  and  power  into  any 
life.  So  assured  has  this  become  that  great  physicians 
have  taken  scientific  account  of  it  in  their  dealing  with 
patients.  It  is  one  of  the  pearls  of  truth  that  one  might 
dig  up  in  that  very  muddy  theological  oyster  bed  which 
we  call  Christian  Science.  Association  does  beget  as¬ 
similation.  We  do  grow  like  that  which  we  study,  and 
like  those  with  whom  we  have  fellowship.  “We  all  with 
unveiled  face  beholding  as  in  a  mirror  the  glory  of  the 
Lord,  are  transformed  into  the  same  image  from  glory 
to  glory,  even  as  from  the  Lord  the  Spirit/'  However 
you  account  for  it,  there  are  men  and  women  who  go 
about  among  their  fellow  men  with  faces  shining  like 
that  of  Moses  when  he  came  down  from  the  mountain, 
and  shining  for  the  same  reason. 

But  is  this  all?  Have  we  exhausted  the  efficiency  of  a 
righteous  man’s  supplication  by  pointing  out  the  great 
beautiful  truths,  which  we  shall  all  recognize,  of  the 
transformation  wrought  in  his  own  inner  life  ?  There  are 
many  good  Christian  men  and  women  who  believe  this  is 
all,  or  who  at  least  believe  that  this  is  sufficient.  They 
think  of  prayer  as  the  rope  which  connects  the  great 
ocean  liner  with  the  little  rowboat.  The  passengers  in  the 
rowboat,  by  pulling  on  that  rope,  cannot  budge  the  liner, 
but  can  bring  themselves  nearer  to  it.  Does  prayer,  in  a 
word,  produce  anything  outside  of  ourselves  which  would 
not  otherwise  have  been  there? 

Let  me  record  my  earnest  personal  conviction  that 
prayer  does  something  for  us  as  well  as  something  in 
us.  I  know  men  have  such  an  idea  of  the  majesty  of 


PRAYER  AND  EFFICIENCY 


37 


God  and  of  the  uniformity  of  nature  that  in  these  days  it 
is  rather  repellent  to  us  to  suppose  that  the  Almighty 
should  be  bothered  with  trifles,  or  that  nature’s  majestic 
routine  should  be  in  any  wise  influenced  by  the  desires 
of  one  of  God’s  humble  children.  And  we  may  freely 
admit  the  dignity  and  majesty  of  that  great  conception 
which  science  has  taught  us  of  the  uniformity  of  nature. 
But  ultimately  the  basis  of  all  such  uniformity  is  in  the 
will  of  God.  And  prayer  as  a  real  cause  bringing  real 
results  is  no  more  a  violation  of  cosmic  law  than  the 
use  of  any  other  means  to  an  end.  It  is  only  our  poor 
human  idea  of  greatness  which  impels  us  to  suppose  that 
because  God  is  so  great  He  cannot  be  concerned  by  small 
things.  The  world  of  the  microscope  reveals  the  same 
precise  intelligence  as  the  world  of  the  telescope.  Elec¬ 
trons  swing  as  accurately  as  fixed  stars.  God  is  in¬ 
finite  in  minuteness  as  well  as  in  vastness.  He  heeds  the 
sparrow’s  fall,  and  the  hairs  of  our  heads  are  numbered. 
There  was  once  a  very  young  minister  who  spoke  on 
prayer  at  a  certain  conference  of  religious  workers.  And 
he  said,  “It  would  be  a  very  vulgar  idea  to  suppose  that  a 
hungry  man  should  pray  and  then  go  out  to  find  a  leg  of 
mutton  hanging  by  the  back  door.”  Perhaps  the  vulgarity 
of  that  conception  of  prayer  would  depend  a  good  deal 
on  how  hungry  the  man  was.  You  will  remember  how 
Jesus  looked  out  over  a  multitude;  and  that  is,  as  you 
know,  a  very  “vulgar”  sight.  The  Latin  vulgus  which 
gives  us  our  English  word  has  its  origin  from  just  that 
kind  of  vision.  Jesus  looked  out  over  that  crowd  and 
saw  that  they  were  hungry;  and  he  did  not  think  it  a 
trifle,  beneath  His  dignity,  to  feed  them. 

Mind  you,  this  is  not  to  say  that  always,  or  perhaps 


38 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


often,  do  these  concrete  answers  to  prayer  come.  It 
would  be  very  disastrous  to  our  spiritual  lives  if  concrete 
answers  to  prayer  became  immediate,  habitual,  and  auto¬ 
matic.  We  would  soon  begin  to  pray  on  the  purely  com¬ 
mercial  basis,  subject  to  the  sneer  of  Satan  in  the  drama 
of  Job,  “Doth  Job  serve  God  for  nought?”  It  would  not 
do  to  let  the  morning  prayer  take  the  place  of  the  order  to 
the  butcher.  But  on  the  other  hand  it  would  be  equally 
disastrous  if  no  concrete  answer  ever  came  to  the  prayers 
of  God’s  people.  That  would  mean  despair.  And  if 
someone  says  that  in  a  world  of  uniformity  no  concrete 
answer  to  prayer  could  be  given  without  violating  the  plan 
of  God  and  the  uniformity  of  nature,  I  have  only  to  reply 
that  everything  will  depend  upon  whether  you  think  of 
this  world  as  mechanical  or  spiritual.  If  it  be  a  mere 
mechanical  uniformity  then  you  are  right.  But  if  the 
supreme  power  in  this  universe  is  the  power  of  mind, 
then  prayer,  which  is  only  the  unloosing  of  spiritual 
energy,  takes  its  place  along  with  any  other  form  of  energy. 
In  that  light  it  would  be  as  futile  and  foolish  to  deprecate 
prayer  as  an  interference  with  the  uniformity  of  law  as  it 
would  be  to  deprecate  the  planting  of  our  crops,  the  light¬ 
ing  of  a  fire  in  the  grate,  or  the  unloosing  of  the  electric 
energy  that  moves  the  trolley  car  or  lights  the  building. 
Prayer  is  only  a  great  spiritual  cause  which  we  can  use, 
if  we  will,  to  produce  results. 

If  anyone  asks  proof  of  this,  let  me  say  in  all  frankness 
that  there  are  no  final  proofs.  To  an  evil  and  adulterous 
generation  shall  no  sign  be  given.  For  no  sign  would 
convince  such  a  generation.  There  is  no  compelling  and 
universal  argument  which  will  constrain  such  a  man  to 
believe.  The  great  things  by  which  we  live,  the  things 


PRAYER  AND  EFFICIENCY 


39 


which  are  worth  while,  are  not  compulsory  in  an  intel¬ 
lectual  sense.  When  Professor  Tyndall  proposed  that 
one  ward  of  a  hospital  should  be  prayed  for  and  another 
should  not  be  prayed  for,  and  science  should  check  up 
on  the  results,  he  was  making  a  proposition  utterly  in¬ 
consistent  with  and  abhorrent  to  the  whole  spirit  of 
Christianity.  This  is  not  a  matter  of  scientific  proofs, 
but  of  inner  experience.  Let  me  only  express  my  per¬ 
sonal  conviction  that  there  are  such  responses  to  prayer, 
so  concrete,  so  definite,  that  no  sane  man  could  possibly 
attribute  them  to  mere  coincidence.  xAgain  and  again  it 
seemed  as  though  the  prayer  went  unanswered ;  though 
there  was  an  answer  higher  and  nobler  than  we  knew. 
But  here  and  there,  standing  out  sharp  and  clean-cut,  like 
bold  mountain  peaks  of  memory,  I  see  occurrences  so 
definitely  related  to  prayer  as  a  cause,  that  to  break  that 
relationship  would  be  to  me  as  though  we  denied  the  re¬ 
lation  between  the  sowing  and  the  reaping  of  a  crop. 

“God  answers  prayer.  Sometimes  when  hearts  are  weak 
He  gives  the  very  gifts  believers  seek; 

But  often  faith  must  find  a  deeper  rest, 

And  trust  His  silence  when  he  does  not  speak, 

Since  he  whose  name  is  Love  will  do  the  best : 

Stars  may  burn  out,  nor  mountain  walls  endure, 

But  God  is  true,  His  promises  are  sure 
To  all  who  seek.” 

Is  this  all?  Have  we  even  now  exhausted  the  fullness 
of  prayer’s  efficiency?  Has  this  great  energy  of  which 
James  speaks  reached  its  ultimate  limit?  Jesus  taught  us 
that  there  was  a  farther  step.  Prayer  not  only  does  some¬ 
thing  in  us  and  something  for  us,  but  something  through 
tis  for  others.  This  is  the  very  background  of  these  words 


40 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


of  James.  It  is  the  efficiency  of  prayer  for  concrete  re¬ 
sults  in  the  lives  of  others  which  is  here  urged.  Jesus 
taught  us  the  same  great  lesson  in  His  story  of  the  mid¬ 
night  visitor  coming  unexpectedly  to  the  poor  man’s  home. 
And  that  host,  made  desperate  by  his  own  need  and  by 
the  oriental  laws  of  hospitality,  goes  up  to  his  rich  neigh¬ 
bor’s,  rouses  him  out  of  his  sleep,  and  addresses  him  as 
“Friend,”  saying,  “Friend,  lend  me  three  loaves:  for  a 
friend  of  mine  is  come  to  me  from  a  journey  and  I  have 
nothing  to  set  before  him.”  There  was  Jesus’  picture 
of  what  we  call  intercessory  prayer.  A  man  pleading  his 
friendship  with  his  neighbor,  and  his  friendship  with  a 
guest,  to  establish  a  relation  between  the  two  so  that  his 
rich  neighbor  might  supply  food  to  his  guest.  The  basis 
of  intercessory  prayer  must  be  in  the  fact  that  we  are 
friends  of  God  and  friends  to  those  for  whom  we  pray. 
And  the  conception  of  our  text  is  that  this  relationship  in 
prayer  for  others  is  the  basis  of  genuine  power.  It  is  not 
simply  laying  hold  on  God’s  powrer  for  our  friends.  It  is 
unloosing  a  power  that  God  can  use  for  them.  When 
some  man  comes  to  you  in  the  midnight  of  doubt  or  need 
or  sorrow,  and  you  feel  your  own  helplessness  to  do  any¬ 
thing  for  him,  Jesus  said  in  substance,  “There  is  supreme 
power,  if  you  can  lay  hold  of  God  as  your  friend,  to 
help  your  neighbor  who  is  also  your  friend.” 

And  in  this  glorious  conception  of  powrer  unloosed  for 
the  service  of  others,  time  and  space  play  little  part.  If 
we  have  learned  anything  out  of  phenomena  like  that  of 
the  radio  and  the  amazing  revelation  of  hidden  powers  in 
the  ether,  we  have  learned  enough  to  estop  all  doubt  that 
the  invisible  energy  of  a  human  soul  in  fellowship  with 
God  may  flash  around  the  world  to  bring  help  and  uplift 


PRAYER  AND  EFFICIENCY 


4i 


to  those  we  love.  Staggering  to  believe,  but  not  more 
staggering  than  the  marvels  of  modern  science  which  have 
become  accepted  commonplaces  of  everyday  life!  Un¬ 
limited  time  could  be  taken  in  the  recounting  of  instance 
after  instance  where  our  plain  common  sense  would  tes¬ 
tify  to  a  definite  relation  between  intercessory  prayer  and 
concrete  results  that  girdled  the  globe.  I  shall  not  do  so, 
because  in  the  last  analysis  our  faith  in  this  power  must 
be  founded  upon  experience  and  not  upon  argument. 

The  message  will  have  fulfilled  its  hoped-for  purpose  if 
only  we  are  stimulated  to  think  of  prayer,  not  as  a  weak 
and  vapid  pious  exercise,  but  if  rightly  used,  as  a  source 
of  contact  with  the  greatest  energy  known  to  the  human 
soul — the  energy  of  that  soul  itself  touched  and  quickened 
by  the  divine  energy  of  the  Father  of  spirits.  Surely  if 
there  are  those  who  look  upon  prayer  as  something  weak 
and  effeminate,  only  a  little  glimpse  of  history  should 
suffice.  Washington  at  Valley  Forge!  Abraham  Lincoln 
pacing  to  and  fro  through  the  long  night  after  Chancel- 
lorsville !  These  were  great  high  priests  of  our  national 
history,  who  bore  our  sins  and  our  needs  at  the  throne  of 
Almighty  God  and  who,  in  the  tremendous  energy  of 
intercessory  prayer,  carried  us  safely  through  the  supreme 
crises  of  our  history.  Chinese  Gordon,  who  never  feared 
the  face  of  man,  wrestling  in  prevailing  prayer  before 
his  God  !  Stonewall  Jackson,  of  whom  it  was  said  that  God 
Almighty  took  him  because  that  mistaken  but  mighty  man 
of  prayer  was  a  real  spiritual  obstacle  in  the  way  of  saving 
the  Union !  You  remember  how  the  poet  soldier  of  the 
Confederate  Army  described  Jackson  at  prayer: 


4  2 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


“Silence !  Ground  arms  !  Kneel  all !  Caps  off ! 

Old  Massa’s  going  to  pray ! 

Strangle  the  fool  that  dares  to  scoff ! 

Attention  ! — It’s  his  way, 

Appealing  from  his  native  sod, 

In  forma  pauperis,  to  God : 

‘Lay  bare  Thine  arm !  Stretch  forth  Thy  rod ! 

Amen!’ — That’s  Stonewall’s  Way.” 

We  think  of  General  Foch,  who  every  day  went  into  a 
little  chapel  for  prayer  before  he  began  its  stern  military 
routine.  We  call  to  mind  Lord  Kitchener,  who  used  to  go 
around  the  corner  every  noon  and  kneel  for  a  few 
moments  in  a  little  church,  that  there  he  might  find 
strength  to  carry  the  terrible  burdens  of  the  World  War. 
They  tell  us  that  when  the  German  Army,  triumphantly 
sweeping  down  toward  Paris,  was  first  stopped  and  rolled 
back  at  the  Marne,  the  message  announcing  their  defeat 
came  to  the  war  office  when  only  Lord  Kitchener  and 
Lord  Roberts  were  present.  The  former  read  the  tele¬ 
gram,  and  with  that  usually  stern,  impassive  face  working 
with  emotion,  he  handed  it  to  his  colleague;  and  Lord 
Roberts  said,  “I  can’t  understand  this,  I  can’t  account 
for  it.”  And  Lord  Kitchener  replied,  “Somebody  has 
been  praying.” 

A  recent  conference  of  big  business  men  in  a  Canadian 
city  discussed  the  problem  of  power  throughout  that  great 
country.  They  are  to  develop  and  distribute  the  unused 
water  power  of  her  magnificent  rivers  and  her  majestic 
falls.  For  they  said,  “The  demand  for  power  is  far  in 
excess  of  the  supply.”  So  with  the  Church  of  God  and 
with  our  lives.  We  need  great  leaders,  we  need  great 
preachers,  we  need  big  finances,  we  need  strong  organiza- 


PRAYER  AND  EFFICIENCY 


43 


tion.  But  over  all  and  above  all  we  need  the  thing  which 
the  disciples  sought  when  in  days  gone  by  they  came 
humbly  to  the  Master  to  say,  “Lord,  teach  us  to  pray.” 
The  demands  upon  us  call  for  power  far  in  excess  of  our 
present  supply.  And  the  power  is  there.  Only  we  have 
failed  to  utilize  and  develop  our  resources.  Mr.  Chauncey 
Depew  in  his  autobiography  relates  the  story  of  how  lov¬ 
ing  hands  bore  murdered  Lincoln’s  body  to  its  final  rest¬ 
ing  place.  He  was  on  the  funeral  train  as  it  passed 
slowly,  through  the  melancholy  night,  from  Albany  to 
Buffalo.  Along  practically  every  mile  of  the  track,  men, 
women  and  children  were  gathered  in  all  night  vigil.  And 
the  dead  chief  was  borne  through  one  continuous  prayer 
meeting  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  journey. 

Some  day  our  greater  Chieftain,  not  dead  but  alive  for 
evermore,  will  move  not  toward  the  tomb  but  toward 
His  World  Throne.  And  He,  too,  will  move  stately  and 
victorious,  upborne  by  the  love  and  devotion  of  the  count¬ 
less  hosts  who  love  Him  and  who  have  learned  to  pray. 


IV. 


THE  FORGOTTEN  SECRET  OF  ZEST 

Text:  Ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth:  but  if  the  salt  have  lost  its 
savor,  wherewith  shall  it  be  salted? 

— Matthew  5  :13 

The  tragedy  of  our  modern  world  is  not  its  lack  of  en¬ 
joyments  but  its  lack  of  enjoyment.  Most  of  us  have  the 
raw  material  of  gladness  without  the  spirit  or  ability  to 
develop  the  finished  product.  The  irritatingly  optimistic 
Pollyanna  irks  us  by  insistence  on  our  being  happy  at 
the  expense  of  our  intelligence.  But  many  intelligent 
people  insist  upon  being  miserable  at  the  expense  of 
everyone  around  them.  It  would  be  startling  and  dis¬ 
heartening  if  we  came  to  realize  how  many  men  and 
women  there  are  of  middle  age  and  beyond,  in  fairly  com¬ 
fortable  circumstances,  to  whom  existence  means  nothing 
more  than  just  going  on;  wondering  betimes  whether 
there  is  much  use  in  going  on.  A  good  many  years  ago 
I  came  across  a  beautiful  little  waltz,  instinct  with  the  joy 
of  living,  written  by  the  great  Russian,  Tschaikowsky. 
It  was  the  exuberance  of  the  man’s  youth  and  health  and 
strength  breaking  out  into  irresistible  song.  In  later 
years  I  have  known  what  it  was  to  have  the  very  heart 
strings  torn  under  the  spell  of  his  immortal  swan  song, 
the  “Pathetic  Symphony,’’  called  by  many  the  “Suicide 
Svmphony”  because  of  its  intense  and  morbid  sadness. 


44 


THE  FORGOTTEN  SECRET  OF  ZEST 


45 


And  in  the  second  movement  I  seemed  to  hear  this  great 
musician  trying  to  sing  again  the  jaunty  little  waltz  song 
of  his  youth.  The  same  general  movement — something  of 
the  same  melody — but  this  time  the  waltz  will  not  go.  It 
is  halting,  broken,  irregular,  wild,  reckless,  elfin-like — in¬ 
finitely  more  sad  than  if  he  had  not  tried  to  be  gay. 

What  a  symbol  of  our  lives !  Can  there  be  anything 
more  pathetic  than  the  spectacle  of  a  man  in  whom  the 
joy  of  living  has  long  since  flickered  out,  trying  to  sing 
again  the  songs  of  his  youth  ? 

We  are  so  often  deceived  by  mere  outward  appearances. 
Because  this  age  has  made  so  much  of  the  machinery  of 
enjoyment,  we  think  it  must  be  a  joyful  age.  We  forget 
that  men  may  make  much  of  the  machinery  of  enjoyment 
in  a  futile  attempt  to  stimulate  an  atrophied  capacity  of 
soul.  If  we  have  the  inner  joy  of  living  we  do  not  need 
the  machinery.  The  tragedy  of  the  world  is  not  the  ab¬ 
sence  of  beauty,  of  joy,  of  humor,  but  the  absence  of  zest 
to  realize  them  and  to  respond  to  them.  If  we  have  no 
living  inner  joy  then  we  are  compelled  to  increase  the 
outer  stimulus.  If  we  have  that  spontaneous  wellspring 
within,  little  stimulus  is  needed.  Wordsworth,  awakened 
by  the  meanest  flower  that  blows,  and  roused  to  thoughts 
that  lie  too  deep  for  tears ;  Smeathem,  finding  inexhaust¬ 
ible  beauties  in  his  own  back  yard;  Thoreau,  thrilling  to 
the  animate  beauty  of  the  woods ;  Tennyson,  peering  into 
the  lily-studded  brook,  crying,  “What  an  imagination  God 
has !”,  Walt  Whitman,  brushing  shoulders  with  the  com¬ 
mon  life  of  the  common  men  whom  he  loved,  and  rejoic¬ 
ing  to  be  such  an  “incredible  god”  in  a  world  of  miracles ; 
— these  had  no  need  of  moving  picture  melodrama,  of 
luxuriant  Roman  feast,  or  of  sensuous  oriental  dances,  to 


4  6 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


galvanize  the  jaded  senses  into  a  forced  and  pitiful  simu¬ 
lation  of  pleasure. 

There  never  were  more  varied  forms  of  entertainment 
than  we  have  today.  But  these  are  not  evidences  of  inner 
enjoyment.  They  are  rather  evidences  of  inner  monotony. 
We  must  have  something  fresh  in  amusements  because  we 
have  nothing  fresh  in  our  inner  lives.  We  must  stimulate 
our  appetities  since  they  have  grown  jaundiced  and  jaded. 

Hence  the  feverish  search  for  new  thrills  in  amuse¬ 
ment.  Certain  daring  forms  of  modern  dancing,  for  in¬ 
stance,  by  their  very  names  suggestive  of  animal  origin 
and  animal  appeal,  are  constantly  changing.  Every 
season  some  new  form  of  sensual  contortion  must  be  de¬ 
vised,  if  possible  a  trifle  more  risque  than  the  last.  This 
indicates  not  so  much  enjoyment  as  a  desperate  effort  to 
stimulate  outworn  sensibilities.  Many  people  exercise 
their  activities  in  this  direction,  not  so  much  for  the  love 
of  the  thing  itself,  as  for  a  temporary  means  of  escape 
from  a  life  that  has  grown  gray  and  dreary.  It  is  quite 
certain  that  often  men  who  drink  do  so  to  escape  mo¬ 
notony,  and  that  drug  addicts  are  seeking  in  the  poppy 
garden  of  opiates  an  artificial  zest  in  living  because  the 
natural  zest  of  life  has  long  since  gone.  Sometimes  I 
seem  to  see  our  vast  amusement  buildings  erected  as 
monuments  to  human  ennui  and  universal  world  weari¬ 
ness.  The  millions  of  dollars  invested  in  these  enterprises 
are  a  golden  tribute  to  the  blase  gods  of  gloom  and  mo¬ 
notony. 

Babylon,  Rome,  or  Broadway — the  story  is  always  the 
same.  And  Matthew  Arnold  told  it: 


THE  FORGOTTEN  SECRET  OF  ZEST 


47 


“On  that  hard  Pagan  world  disgust 
And  secret  loathing  fell. 

Deep  weariness  and  sated  lust 
Made  human  life  a  hell. 

“In  his  cool  hall,  with  haggard  eyes, 

The  Roman  noble  lay; 

He  drove  abroad,  in  furious  guise, 

Along  the  Appian  Way. 

“He  made  a  feast,  drank  fierce  and  fast, 

And  crown’d  his  hair  with  flowers — 

No  easier  nor  no  quicker  pass’d 
The  impracticable  hours.” 

And  now  we  are  ready  for  our  message:  “Ye  are  the 
salt  of  the  earth/’  That  is  Jesus’  wonderful  pungent 
figure  by  which  at  a  single  touch  He  unfolded  a  supreme 
phase  of  Christian  life.  What  is  the  business  of  salt? 
To  furnish  zest.  Without  it  the  things  we  eat  would  be 
stale  and  flat.  And  these  men  had  the  salt,  the  zest  of 
life.  They  had  found  it  in  Christ  and  in  the  vision  and 
insight  which  they  had  caught  from  Him.  He  had  given 
them  faith  and  hope  and  love.  In  him  they  had  become 
little  children.  And  the  supreme  characteristic  of  a  little 
child  is  that  very  zest  of  life  which  we  envy  but  cannot 
imitate.  The  imperative  formula  of  the  little  baby  is,  “Do 
it  again,”  long  after  the  exercise  has  grown  weary  to  the 
adult — because  the  baby  has  the  zest  which  we  have  lost. 
A  baby  is  constantly  encoring  what  seems  to  us  a  very  dull 
performance.  He  wants  the  same  thing  over,  while  we — 
God  help  us — grown  outworn  and  weary,  are  constantly 
demanding  something  new.  In  this  sense  children  are 
ingrained  conservatives.  Paul  called  the  Deity  “the  happy 
God.”  He  never  grows  tired  or  outworn.  He  repeats 


48 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


Himself  but  never  wearies.  Mr.  Chesterton  has  suggested 
that  through  endless  routine  of  nature,  through  the  “in¬ 
tricate  and  bright  device  of  days  and  seasons”  and  cen¬ 
turies,  God  is  continually  saying,  “Do  it  again” — the  un¬ 
wearied  Author  of  Life  is  ever  encoring  His  own  per¬ 
formance.  He  looks  on  His  own  work  and  sees  that  it 
is  very  good. 

The  indwelling  life  of  God,  then,  is  the  true  secret  of 
zest.  But  these  words  indicate  that  men  do  try  to  find 
that  secret  in  ways  that  are  false  and  illusory.  There  is  a 
salt  that  has  lost  its  savor.  There  is  a  pitiful  imitation 
of  joy  which  ends  in  darkness.  Nothing  but  the  indwell¬ 
ing  life  of  God  will  do  the  work.  All  other  stimuli  are 
salt  that  has  lost  its  savor  and  that  is  good  for  nothing 
but  to  be  cast  out  and  trodden  under  foot  of  men.  The 
stimulus  that  comes  from  without,  from  environment, 
from  the  trappings  and  appurtenances  of  pleasure,  ends 
where  that  royal  experimenter  of  the  Old  Testament 
ended,  “Vanity  of  vanities,  all  is  vanity.”  It  ends  with 
the  melancholy  of  Hamlet:  “I  have  of  late — but  where¬ 
fore  I  know  not — lost  all  my  mirth,  foregone  all  custom 
of  exercises ;  and  indeed  it  goes  so  heavily  with  my  dis¬ 
position  that  this  goodly  frame,  the  earth,  seems  to  me  a 
sterile  promontory;  this  most  excellent  canopy,  the  air, 
look  you,  this  brave  o’erhanging  firmament,  this  majestical 
roof  fretted  with  golden  fire,  why,  it  appears  no  other 
thing  to  me  than  a  foul  and  pestilent  congregation  of 
vapors.” 

But  when  the  thrilling  life  of  the  happy  God  abides  in 
a  man  all  ennui  vanishes.  A  new  flavor,  a  salty  zest,  is 
found  in  each  commonplace  experience.  The  new  man 
in  Christ  looks  out  with  fresh  eyes  on  a  new  world.  All 


THE  FORGOTTEN  SECRET  OF  ZEST 


49 


things  are  become  wonderful  to  him.  When  Saint 
Francis  of  Assisi  had  left  his  wealthy  cultured  home,  had 
abandoned  his  aristocratic  friends,  had  said  goodbye  to 
the  things  men  call  enjoyment,  to  wine  and  dancing  and 
roistering  and  luxuriant  feasts ;  had  gone  out  without  a 
penny  in  his  pocket,  without  a  roof  over  his  head,  or  a 
square  foot  of  land  upon  the  earth  that  he  could  call  his 
own ;  had  gone  out  as  the  brother  of  the  poor,  a  voluntary 
beggar,  to  share  with  his  Lord  the  burden  of  the  cross ; 
he  could  ascend  to  one  of  his  favorite  mountain  haunts 
and  spend  a  week  there  upon  those  bleak  cliffs,  absolutely 
alone,  and  yet  scarcely  able  to  sleep  for  the  thrilling  hap¬ 
piness  which  overflowed  every  moment,  radiant  and 
splendid,  tingling  through  every  fiber  of  his  being. 

For  Christ  teaches  us  to  know  the  world  and  our  fellow 
men  over  against  a  personal  background  with  a  spiritual 
meaning  and  a  joyful  outcome.  We  are  not  the  sport  of 
blind  chance,  the  creatures  of  hard  mechanism.  Back  of 
us  is  a  great,  wise  plan.  All  about  us  the  currents  of  a 
steady  progress  toward  a  sublime  goal — an  increasing 
purpose  running  through  the  ages.  And  in  front  of  us  a 
destiny  of  unimaginable  splendor  and  victory.  We  are 
characters  of  a  thrilling  drama,  and  the  universe  is  our 
gorgeous  stage  setting.  Nor  is  a  mere  intellectual  in¬ 
terest  in  life  our  chief  stimulus.  We  learn  to  love  men 
and  to  love  the  world  for  the  sake  of  men.  This  love  trans¬ 
forms  and  transfigures  the  earth  for  the  most  stolid  man 
who  walks  upon  it.  For  him  the  world  has  new  mean¬ 
ings  ;  for  him  nature  becomes  God’s  unfolding,  and  all 
about  him  is  the  palpitating  interest  of  God’s  handiwork. 
For  him  the  sky  is  not  brass,  but  blue  and  tender  with 
the  love  of  God.  For  him  the  woods  and  fields  become 


50 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


the  tracery  of  a  Father’s  hand.  For  him  a  “livelier  iris 
changes  on  the  burnish’d  dove.”  For  him  human  life 
becomes  an  eternal  drama  and  not  the  mere  working  of  a 
chemical  formula.  For  him  history  is  a  thrilling  romance, 
wonderful  in  its  beginnings,  marvelous  in  its  progress. 
And  as  he  looks  forward  he  finds  a  breathless  interest  in 
its  outcome.  No  novel  reader  ever  waited  with  greater 
eagerness  for  the  denouement  of  a  thrilling  plot  than  the 
child  of  God  knows  as  he  looks  out  toward  the  future 
and  cries,  “Even  so,  come,  Lord  Jesus.” 

Now  you  can  see  how  Christianity  dispenses  with  some 
forms  of  amusement,  not  so  much  because  it  fights  them 
as  because  it  supersedes  them.  They  are  dropped  as  the 
child  drops  the  kindergarten  toys  for  the  pleasures  of  the 
older  years.  We  do  not  need  them  and  we  have  lost  our 
taste  for  them.  I  have  played  a  good  many  games  in  my 
time,  and  I  say  to  you  today  in  all  sincerity  that  there  is 
absolutely  no  sport  with  half  so  thrilling  an  interest  as 
the  game  of  great  world  conquest  for  Jesus  Christ.  The 
only  game  that  keeps  you  young  has  an  eternal  outcome. 
In  all  others  death,  the  great  umpire,  calls  the  game  on 
account  of  darkness.  The  curious  thing  about  it  is  that 
pastimes  which  have  no  eternal  aim  make  people  old  when 
they  are  young.  The  fun  and  zest  that  come  to  men  in 
the  great  game  of  Christian  service  make  people  young 
when  they  are  old.  Men  spoke  pathetically  of  poor  “old” 
Matthewson,  who,  after  a  long  career  on  the  baseball 
diamond,  went  staggering  on  toward  the  melancholy 
burdens  of  age  and  retirement  at  thirty-five.  A  few  years 
ago  I  stood  on  the  platform  with  a  minister  of  the  gospel 
and  was  uplifted  while  he  prayed  one  of  the  sweetest, 
freshest,  most  childlike  prayers  I  ever  heard.  It  was 


THE  FORGOTTEN  SECRET  OF  ZEST 


5i 


radiant  with  optimism,  glowing  with  vigor,  splendid  in 
courage.  The  man  had  just  passed  his  ninety-fifth  birth¬ 
day.  Lord  Byron  as  a  young  man,  with  wealth  and  social 
position  and  genius  and  fame,  sang: 

“My  days  are  in  the  yellow  leaf ; 

The  flowers  and  frnits  of  Love  are  gone; 

The  worm,  the  canker,  and  the  grief 
Are  mine  alone !” 

But  here  is  an  old  man,  sick,  imprisoned,  ready  to  die,  who 
can  cry :  “I  have  fought  the  good  fight,  I  have  finished 
the  course,  I  have  kept  the  faith :  henceforth  there  is  laid 
up  for  me  the  crown  of  righteousness  which  the  Lord,  the 
righteous  judge,  shall  give  to  me  at  that  day.”  Here  is  the 
true  Christian  zest  of  life.  Here  is  robust,  full-throated 
optimism  to  which  death  itself  is  a  negligible  incident  of  a 
larger  life. 

“Grow  old  along  with  me ! 

The  best  is  yet  to  be, 

The  last  of  life,  for  which  the  first  was  made: 

Our  times  are  in  his  hand 
Who  saith,  ‘A  whole  I  planned, 

Youth  shows  but  half;  trust  God:  see  all,  nor 
be  afraid !’  ” 

Now  not  only  does  the  Christian  have  this  zest  of  living, 
but  he  gives  it.  He  is  the  salt  of  the  earth.  There  is 
somehow  a  very  foolish  idea  that  the  mission  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  to  make  bright  things  dull.  On  the  contrary,  I 
cannot  think  of  how  dull  a  place  this  world  would  have 
been  if  Christianity  had  not  come  into  it.  Do  you  not 
know,  does  not  everybody  know  that  when  Jesus  Christ 
came  into  this  world  both  Rome  and  Greece  were  dying  of 


52 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


ennui  ?  But  the  apostles  went  out  into  that  blase,  weary 
world  like  fresh,  eager  children,  thrilling  with  joy  and 
interest  and  delight,  looking  upward  and  not  down,  look¬ 
ing  forward  and  not  back ;  and  with  them  came  a  new  zest, 
even  to  men  who  were  not  Christians.  Have  you  ever 
realized  that  the  problems  that  interest  us  most  have 
been  raised  by  Christianity?  There  is  a  merry  little  jest 
about  theology  being  a  dull  topic.  Now  they  do  not  know 
it,  but  there  are  more  people  interested  in  theology  than  in 
any  other  subject.  The  real  interest  which  most  men 
have  in  life  rests  on  the  moral  interpretation  of  it.  If 
there  were  no  questions  of  right  and  wrong  involved, 
there  would  be  no  particular  interest  in  the  late  war,  for 
there  would  be  nothing  to  debate  about ;  it  would  all  reduce 
to  a  mathematical  formula  as  bloodless  as  a  chess  game. 
The  interest  we  have  in  all  problems  about  women  has 
been  put  into  modern  life  by  Christianity.  Our  great 
modern  social  questions  have  been  given  to  us  by  Chris¬ 
tianity.  There  are  many  today  not  professedly  Christian 
who  are  turning  to  social  service  as  a  panacea  for  the 
weariness  and  monotony  of  living,  who  yet  do  not  realize 
that  Christianity  has  furnished  this  zest,  has  given  them 
the  salt  of  the  earth  to  rescue  their  lives  from  utter  stale¬ 
ness. 

There  is  another  phase  to  the  matter.  Salt  is  more  than 
an  agent  to  give  zest.  It  preserves  from  decay.  It  is 
everywhere  and  always  the  enemy  of  putrefaction.  How 
fitting  a  symbol  of  the  life  of  God.  It  is  that  mysterious 
life  in  the  body  which  arrests  the  process  of  decay  that 
would  otherwise  disintegrate  the  organism.  And  it  is  the 
life  of  God  in  civilization  which  does  the  same  thing. 
Sodom  could  have  been  saved  if  it  had  had  enough  of  the 


THE  FORGOTTEN  SECRET  OF  ZEST 


53 


vital  life  of  God  in  it.  But  what  little  salt  there  was  had 
lost  its  savor,  and  the  doom  fell. 

The  great  question  which  all  thoughtful  men  are  asking 
today  is  whether  Christianity  has  retained  enough  vital 
power  to  save  the  world  from  decay  and  disaster.  For 
whether  men  believe  its  doctrines  or  not,  all  unite  in  the 
confession  that  if  the  faith  of  Christ  cannot  save  the 
world  nothing  can.  And  it  preserves  because  it  maintains 
the  enthusiasm,  the  zeal  and  zest,  for  great  ideals,  with¬ 
out  which  the  hope  of  the  world  is  gone.  This  was  the 
word  of  Jesus  to  his  Church  at  Ephesus,  “I  know  thy 
works,  and  thy  toil  and  patience ....  But  I  have  this 
against  thee,  that  thou  didst  leave  thy  first  love.”  The 
Church  was  ready  to  die  when  the  zest  had  gone  out.  And 
the  most  alarming  thing  about  these  days  in  which  we 
live  is  that  a  pall  of  cynicism  seems  to  have  settled  down 
on  this  country  after  the  fine  glory  of  the  zeal  and  en¬ 
thusiasm  which  carried  us  through  the  war.  We  have  lost 
our  early  love,  and  without  it  we  die. 

Men  and  women  who  profess  the  name  of  Christ  are 
the  salt  of  this  weary,  cynical,  blase  post-war  period  in 
which  we  live.  The  phrases  of  selfish  reaction  are  in  the 
air.  “Everybody  is  getting  his,  and  I  will  get  mine.” 
Over  many  a  life  is  written  the  sinister  motto  of  the  old 
Scotch  house  of  Teviotdale,  “Thou  shalt  want  ere  I  want.” 
Internationally  we  bluntly  said  to  the  world  through  our 
official  representative  in  the  great  Anglo-Saxon  empire 
across  the  sea,  “We  fought  for  ourselves  only;  for  our¬ 
selves  first,  last,  and  always.”  We  stand  broadly  in  the 
councils  of  the  nations  as  ready  to  participate  far  enough 
to  care  for  our  rights,  but  no  farther.  Our  mission  is  to 
recreate  the  zest  for  the  unselfish  ideals  without  which  we 


54 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


would  soon  be  on  the  road  toward  the  doom  of  Prussia. 
Some  of  us  may  already  have  felt  the  breath  of  this  en¬ 
ervating  world  weariness,  and  must  find  a  more  solid 
basis  of  happiness  than  any  pursuit  of  pleasure  can  bring. 
The  only  permanent  zest  that  life  can  give  is  in  the  will 
yielded  to  God  and  the  body  and  mind  dedicated  to  Him. 
The  biggest,  best  game  ever  played  is  before  us.  Let  us 
play  it  for  Him.  If  we  do  this  honestly,  two  things  can 
be  promised  absolutely.  For  one  thing  we  shall  find  for 
ourselves  permanent  joy  in  living. 

And  then  we  shall  bring  the  saving  salt,  the  true  zest  of 
life,  to  the  world  about  us.  Have  you  forgotten  how  little 
Pippa,  in  Browning’s  poem,  had  caught  this  secret  joy 
that  comes  with  the  indwelling  life  of  God?  Poor  and 
ignorant,  a  mill  girl,  without  prestige  or  social  standing 
or  influence,  she  went  out  into  the  world  with  a  song  in 
her  heart: 

“The  year’s  at  the  spring 

And  day’s  at  the  morn; 

Morning’s  at  seven; 

The  hillside’s  dew-pearled; 

The  lark’s  on  the  wing; 

The  snail’s  on  the  thorn : 

God’s  in  His  heaven — 

All’s  right  with  the  world !” 

And  that  song  of  the  little  mill  girl  “invaded  the  hall  of 
the  sensualist,  it  smote  upon  the  ears  of  one  who  had 
been  betrayed  to  the  life  of  ignoble  ease,  it  stole  upon  one 
who  had  been  entangled  in  ways  of  treachery  and  dis¬ 
honor,”  it  pealed  in  the  ears  of  men  and  women  who, 
without  God  and  without  hope  in  the  world,  were  going 
down  the  easy  descent  into  the  abyss.  And  wherever  she 
went,  men  and  women  rose  with  their  faces  toward  the 


THE  FORGOTTEN  SECRET  OF  ZEST 


55 


sky,  and  with  new  life  purpose,  started  once  more  toward 
the  celestial  city.  Something  like  that  I  think  Jesus  must 
have  meant  when  He  said,  “Ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth.” 
Not  a  little  section  of  it,  but  the  whole  earth.  Weary,  sin- 
sick  multitudes  across  the  seas  are  waiting  for  our  hope, 
our  courage,  our  love.  We  must  give  them  the  incentive 
that  fights  battles  and  wins  victories. 

An  eye  witness  told  me  the  story  of  that  fateful  day 
when  it  looked  as  though  the  Germans  would  break  the 
allied  line  at  Chateau  Thierry.  The  French  soldiers  were 
despondent,  despairing.  The  arrogant  Prussian  officers 
had  gathered  in  triumph  to  see  the  German  army  sweep 
through  that  gateway,  after  that  on  to  Paris,  roll  back 
the  allied  lines,  crush  England,  and  dictate  terms  of  peace 
to  the  world !  Then,  in  the  very  hour  of  despair,  men 
caught  the  sound  of  distant  music.  By  and  by  the  gleam 
of  rifles.  The  little  band  of  Americans  was  marching  to 
the  front,  singing  as  they  went : 

“Over  there — over  there — 

Send  the  word,  send  the  word  over  there — 

That  the  Yanks  are  coming,  the  Yanks  are  coming, 

The  drums  rum-tumming  everywhere — 

So  prepare,  say  a  pray’r — 

Send  the  word,  send  the  word  to  beware — 

We’ll  be  over,  we’re  coming  over, 

And  we  won’t  come  back  till  it’s  over,  over  there !” 

And  the  tide  of  battle  turned.  The  gateway  to  Paris  was 
closed.  Civilization  was  saved  from  the  Prussian  menace. 

But  once  again  the  world  is  well-nigh  in  despair.  The 
enemy  is  coming  in  like  a  flood.  Cynicism,  selfishness, 
pessimism,  suspicion,  hatred — all  the  hell  brood  of  human 
passions  are  threatening  the  gateways  to  the  city  of  God. 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


56 

Oh,  for  the  enthusiasm,  the  glorious  morale,  of  those 
American  lads!  Men  and  women  are  waiting  for  our 
faith,  our  hope,  our  courage,  our  unselfishness,  our  love. 
And  we  must  carry  it  to  the  lands  across  the  seas.  We 
dare  not  fold  our  hands  while  the  world  burns.  Ring  it 
again,  soldiers  of  the  Cross ! 

“We’ll  be  over,  we’re  coming  over, 

And  we  won’t  come  back  till  it’s  over,  over  there.” 


V. 


HEAVEN  IN  THE  MAKING 

Text:  And  I  say  unto  you,  Make  to  yourselves  friends  by  means 
of  the  mammon  of  unrighteousness ;  that,  when  it  shall 
fail,  they  may  receive  you  into  the  eternal  tabernacles.” 

—  Luke  16 :9 

Only  a  few  years  ago  the  air  was  full  of  voices  which 
cried  that  the  modern  man  is  no  longer  interested  in 
personal  immortality.  Dreams  of  blessed  isles  of  the 
just,  of  golden  streets  and  jeweled  gates,  were  outworn. 
The  day  had  gone  by,  they  said,  when  the  average 
listener  thrilled  to  vague  and  mystical  pictures  of  future 
beatitude.  The  practical  demands  of  the  living  present 
were  the  heart  of  the  “New  Gospel.”  With  ceaseless 

<V»  ; 

iteration  popular  writers  and  speakers  rehearsed  that  well- 
worn  epigram, — the  most  dangerous  lie  in  the  world  be¬ 
cause  a  half  truth, — “Our  business  is  not  to  get  men  into 
heaven,  but  to  get  heaven  into  men.”  And  the  critics  of 
the  Church  declared  the  pulpit  was  failing  because  it  pro¬ 
claimed  an  other-world  gospel  at  the  expense  of  re¬ 
ligion  now  and  here. 

Then  came  the  shattering  catastrophe  of  world  war. 
Ten  million  young  men,  the  very  flower  of  the  race,  were 
hurled  into  the  jaws  of  death.  They  passed  through  the 
dark  portal,  not  as  those  who  come  down  to  the  grave 
“like  a  shock  of  corn  fully  ripe,”  but  stripling  lads  with 
“dreams  of  love  upon  their  beardless  lips.”  The  world 


57 


58 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


was  plunged  into  mourning.  Everywhere  the  sensitive 
ear  could  hear  the  patter  of  falling  teardrops.  Mothers 
in  all  lands  were  like  “Rachel,  weeping  for  her  children, 
and  would  not  be  comforted,  because  they  are  not.” 

Suddenly  a  crosstide  swept  over  the  surface  of  human 
thought.  The  modern  man  awoke  to  the  discovery  that 
he  was  interested  in  personal  immortality, — as  deeply, 
vitally  interested  as  the  singer  who  many  centuries  ago 
voiced  the  unutterable  pathos  of  human  longing  in  the 
90th  Psalm.  A  rationalized  and  scientific  revival  of  spirit¬ 
ualism  stirred  the  minds  of  thinkers  both  in  England  and 
America.  Men  like  Myers,  and  Lodge,  and  Doyle,  and 
Maeterlinck,  and  Flammarion,  and  Barrett,  and  Hyslop, 
either  in  propria  persona ,  or  by  alleged  messages  from 
across  the  veil,  became  the  prophets  of  the  new  order. 
And  once  more  the  church  and  the  pulpit  came  under  fire. 
The  modern  man  who  a  few  years  ago  blamed  the  min¬ 
ister  for  preaching  too  much  heaven  now  criticised  him 
for  preaching  too  little.  He  was  told  on  every  hand  that 
the  wave  of  spiritism  had  resulted  from  the  Church’s 
neglect  to  give  out  a  clear  and  unequivocal  message  con¬ 
cerning  the  future  life ;  that  the  ministry  had  been  deal¬ 
ing  too  much  with  petty  social  and  community  problems, 
and  had  failed  to  meet  and  answer  the  great  eternal  spirit¬ 
ual  longings  of  men.  Thus  the  bewildered  preacher,  who 
in  a  short  range  of  years  had  been  under  indictment  on 
exactly  opposite  and  contradictory  charges,  learned  once 
more  how  his  Master  must  have  felt  when  He  cried  to  a 
critical  and  unspiritual  generation:  “We  piped  unto  you 
and  ye  did  not  dance;  we  wailed,  and  ye  did  not  weep.” 

But  however  this  may  be,  the  gospel  preacher — who 
has  known  all  along  that  his  business  is  both  to  get  men 


HEAVEN  IN  THE  MAKING 


59 


into  heaven  and  to  get  heaven  into  men,  that  his  message 
is  not  one  of  this  world  only  nor  of  the  next  world  only, 
but  is  indeed  a  romance  of  two  worlds, — interdependent 
and  interpenetrating, — has  now  definitely  to  reckon  with 
a  new  and  intense  interest  in  the  future  life.  The  world 
tragedy  from  which  we  are  barely  emerging  has  revealed 
once  more  how  deep  and  permanent  and  insatiable  is  the 
human  longing  voiced  by  that  pathetic  cry  in  Tennyson's 
"Maud" : 

“Ah  Christ,  that  it  were  possible 
For  one  short  hour  to  see 
The  souls  we  loved,  that  they  might  tell  us, 

What  and  where  they  be.” 

Two  practical  difficulties  confront  the  modern  man  in 
any  attempt  to  think  sanely  of  the  future  life.  The  first 
is  in  his  utter  inability  to  realize  the  eternal  value  of  a 
person.  We  look  at  humanity  in  the  concrete — ignorant, 
crude,  selfish,  often  abnormal,  distorted,  and  perverted — 
to  find  ourselves  confronted  by  the  grim  question,  "Are 
humans  after  all  worth  preserving?  Have  they,  in  sober 
truth,  ‘survival  value’?"  We  see  a  crowd  as  the  young 
Quaker  in  "The  Redemption  of  David  Corson"  saw  it; 
and  sometimes  the  faces,  in  stolidity  and  cunning  and  sel¬ 
fishness,  seem  well-nigh  bestial.  We  think  of  the  army  of 
idiots,  imbeciles,  insane,  morons  and  savages  of  varying 
degrees,  and  ask  ourselves  whether  these  can  be  sanely 
linked  up  with  the  thought  of  eternal  existence. 

Indeed,  Professor  William  James,  in  his  "Ingersoll 
Lectures  on  Immortality,"  at  Harvard  University,  faces 
this  difficulty  as  one  of  the  supreme  obstacles  to  belief  in 
immortality.  He  meets  it  rather  by  a  retort  than  by  a 
reply.  His  retort  is  that  the  question  of  a  man’s  survival 


6o 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


value  will  depend  a  good  deal  on  whether  you  ask  the  man 
himself  or  someone  else.  Every  one  is  likely  to  think 
that  he  himself  is  worth  preserving,  no  matter  what  he 
may  think  of  others.  John  Lord,  the  historian,  in  an 
early  theological  examination,  was  asked  by  his  ultra¬ 
orthodox  New  England  inquisitors  whether  he  would  be 
willing  to  be  damned  for  the  glory  of  God.  John  Lord’s 
reply,  which,  by  the  way,  ended  his  theological  career,  in¬ 
dicated  that  he  was  quite  willing  to  have  his  inquisitors 
damned  for  the  glory  of  God.  Our  pessimism  regarding 
human  survival  value  is  seldom  directed  at  ourselves,  but 
uniformly  at  our  neighbors. 

But  this,  as  I  have  indicated,  was  only  a  retort,  not  a 
reply.  The  real  answer  must  lie  in  the  undiscovered 
worth,  the  hidden  possibilities  of  humanity.  Just  as  seven- 
eighths  of  an  iceberg  lies  below  the  surface  of  the  water, 
so  the  vast  bulk  of  human  personality  lies  below  the  sur¬ 
face,  even  of  one’s  self-knowledge.  The  poorest,  shal¬ 
lowest  human  of  your  acquaintance  may  have  below  the 
line  of  consciousness  eternal  possibilities  fitting  him  for 
an  eternal  life.  Even  the  idiot,  as  Professor  Myers  points 
out,  may  be  not  at  all  a  defective  or  limited  personality, 
but  perhaps  a  very  wonderful  and  splendid  personality 
trying  to  express  itself  through  a  defective  instrument. 
When  I  heard  that  wonderful  boy  Heifetz  play  the  violin 
it  seemed  like  the  last  word  in  the  noblest  form  of  musical 
expression,  next  to  the  human  voice.  But  put  into  the 
hands  of  Heifetz  a  violin  broken  or  untuned,  and  even 
from  him  you  will  get  discords.  Ophelia,  whom  I  con¬ 
sider  the  loveliest  of  all  Shakespeare’s  creations,  is  lovely 
in  spite  of  her  insanity  as  she  sings  with  a  discordant 
broken  note,  “like  sweet  bells  jangled  out  of  tune,  and 


HEAVEN  IN  THE  MAKING 


61 


harsh.”  But  might  it  not  be  that  some  day  Ophelia  will 
have  the  bells  tuned  up  once  more;  that  some  day  the 
idiot  or  the  moron  may  express  the  infinite  possibilities 
within  him  through  a  new  and  perfect  physical  instrument 
of  expression?  Professor  Myers  thinks  so.  The  Chris¬ 
tian  believes  it  because  he  has  this  promise:  that  some 
day  his  body  of  humiliation  will  be  displaced  by  a  glorious 
body,  a  Christ-like  body,  an  instrument  without  a  flaw. 

The  other  great  practical  difficulty  in  the  way  of  sane 
thinking  regarding  heaven  is  in  the  constant  tendency  to 
judge  realities  within  the  narrow  limits  of  the  five  senses. 
Show  me  a  man  who  cannot  believe  in  a  heaven  because 
he  has  never  seen  it,  and  I  will  show  you  one  who  would 
be  compelled  by  parity  of  reasoning  to  deny  much  of  the 
beauty  and  glory  of  the  earth  in  which  he  lives.  Modern 
physical  science  has  revealed  the  utter  futility,  the  narrow 
blindness,  of  the  creed  which  cries,  “Seeing  is  believing.” 
I  hesitate  in  the  use  of  illustrations  drawn  from  physical 
science — being  all  the  more  inclined  to  use  such  illustra¬ 
tions  delicately  and  gingerly  when  I  hear  some  of  my 
scientific  friends  talking  theology.  But  they  tell  us  of  the 
solar  spectrum,  with  the  sunlight  broken  up  into  its  com¬ 
ponent  colors — the  red  or  the  heat  rays  on  one  end,  and 
the  violet  or  chemical  rays  on  the  other  end,  while  in  be¬ 
tween  are  the  bands  of  intermediate  color.  In  the  violet 
end  of  the  solar  spectrum  the  vibrations  of  ether  are  very 
short  and  very  rapid — some  seven  hundred  and  twenty- 
eight  million  million  to  the  second.  On  the  red  end  of  the 
solar  spectrum  the  vibrations  are  much  longer  in  wave 
length,  and  slower, — only  some  four  hundred  and  twenty- 
seven  million  million  to  the  second.  Now  the  eye  can  see 
all  the  vibrations  between  the  violet  end  and  the  red  end, 


62 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


but  it  can  see  no  farther,  and  on  the  basis  of  ordinary  com¬ 
mon  sense  observation  we  would  say  there  is  nothing  more 
to  be  seen.  Science,  however,  can  show  us  pictures  of 
colors  taken  outside  the  violet  end  of  four  times  the  rapid¬ 
ity  of  vibration,  and  outside  the  red  end  of  three  times  the 
wave  length.  You  cannot  see  them,  but  the  physicist  has 
proved  that  this  is  not  because  these  colors  are  not  there, 
it  is  only  because  of  the  narrow  and  limited  range  of  the 
human  eye. 

In  like  manner  the  sounds  you  hear  are  not  the  only 
sounds  of  the  natural  world,  but  those  alone  which  happen 
to  lie  within  the  range  of  the  human  ear.  The  normal 
ear  will  take  in  vibrations  at  the  rate  of  thirty-five  thou¬ 
sand  a  second,  but  if  one  goes  very  far  above  or  very 
far  below  this  standard  the  sound  will  become  inaudible. 
Different  ears  may  also  vary  in  their  adjustment  to  these 
vibrations.  Professor  Tyndall,  walking  with  a  friend  in 
the  field,  complained  of  the  shrill  chirping  of  crickets 
which  his  friend  could  not  hear.  Do  not  assume  that 
there  is  no  celestial  music  because  your  ear  cannot  take  it 
in.  Do  not  measure  the  melody  of  the  spheres  by  the  de¬ 
ficiency  of  your  receiving  apparatus.  Both  in  quality  and  in 
quantity  music  depends  as  much  upon  the  auditor  as  upon 
the  performer.  A  friend  and  teacher  of  college  days  used 
to  tell  of  listening  to  concerts  in  company  with  Professor 
Karl  Merz,  the  late  gifted  musician  of  The  College  of 
Wooster.  And  my  friend  said  that  while  Karl  Merz  sat 
with  the  tears  rolling  down  his  cheeks  under  the  touch  of 
the  great  musical  masters,  she  would  sit  wondering  when 
the  noises  would  cease  so  that  she  could  go  home. 

Of  music  as  of  the  Master’s  word  it  must  be  said,  “He 


HEAVEN  IN  THE  MAKING 


63 


that  hath  ears  to  hear,  let  him  hear.”  For  he,  while  others 
are  insensate,  echoes  Tennyson’s  glorious  Choric  Song: 

“There  is  sweet  music  here  that  softer  falls 
Than  petals  from  blown  roses  on  the  grass, 

Or  night-dews  on  still  waters  between  walls 
Of  shadowy  granite,  in  a  gleaming  pass, 

Music  that  gentlier  on  the  spirit  lies, 

Than  tir’d  eyelids  upon  tir’d  eyes; 

Music  that  brings  sweet  sleep  down  from  the  blissful 
skies.” 

No,  we  shall  never  enlarge  our  minds  and  hearts  to  the 
possibilities  of  heaven  till  we  have  enlarged  them  to  the 
possibilities  of  this  earth,  until  we  have  realized  that  what 
we  see  and  hear  is  only  a  little,  trifling  segment  of  reality. 
The  Greek  first  reasoned  about  immortality,  because  of  all 
the  ancient  peoples  the  Greek  had  his  eyes  and  ears  open 
to  the  glories  of  the  world  that  now  is.  And  modem 
science  has  brought  a  new  emphasis  to  that  noble  reas¬ 
surance  of  Paul,  “Eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  ear  heard, 
neither  have  entered  into  the  heart  of  man,  the  things 
which  God  hath  prepared  for  them  that  love  him.” 

Who  was  Jesus  of  Nazareth?  Opinions,  even  of  good 
men,  will  differ  concerning  the  mystery  of  His  person. 
But  at  this  point  all  are  agreed.  Jesus  could  see  beyond 
the  red  rays  and  the  violet  rays  of  the  solar  spectrum! 
Jesus  could  hear  the  music  that  lies  above  and  below  the 
thirty-five  thousand  vibration  range  of  our  dull  ears!  He 
moved  through  the  invisible  world  as  one  who  walks  in 
his  native  atmosphere.  He  never  condescended  to  argue 
for  the  future  life,  but  always  calmly  assumed  it.  When 
He  spoke  abofit  heaven  it  was  with  the  ease  of  an  expert 


64 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


and  the  finality  of  an  authority :  and  He  looked  on  a 
doubter  of  the  spirit  world  with  sheer,  stark  amazement. 

Nowhere  does  Jesus  give  a  plainer  and  more  comfort¬ 
ing  picture  of  the  future  life  than  in  this  inimitable  story 
commonly  known  as  the  Parable  of  the  Unjust  Steward. 
Let  us  give  to  that  great  human  tale  modern  terms  and 
setting.  Here  was  a  superintendent  who  was  in  trouble 
with  his  employer.  One  day  there  came  this  order  :  “Take 
an  inventory  of  the  goods  and  balance  the  books.  You  are 
through.  You  are  done.  You  are  fired.”  Greatly  dis¬ 
turbed,  the  man  ponders  what  to  do.  He  is  economically 
unfit.  He  has  lost  all  industrial  adaptability.  He  can  no 
longer  do  manual  labor.  He  faces,  moreover,  infinite  hu¬ 
miliation,  as  he  must  step  down  from  the  position  of  a 
superintendent  to  the  place  of  a  beggar  on  the  street.  So 
he  resolves  upon  a  plan  of  campaign.  Whatever  happens, 
he  will  make  friends  who  will  stand  by  him  when  his  po¬ 
sition  is  lost.  Accordingly  he  calls  in  one  of  the  firm’s 
debtors.  “How  much  do  you  owe  ?  One  hundred  thousand 
dollars?  Well,  we  will  juggle  the  books  a  little  and  call 
that  fifty  thousand.”  Then  to  another,  “How  much  do 
you  owe?  One  hundred  thousand  dollars?  Well,  suppose 
we  call  it  eighty  thousand  on  the  ledger.”  Thus  he  went 
on,  making  friends  against  that  dread  future  when,  with 
his  position  lost,  he  would  be  so  sorely  in  need  of  them. 

By  and  by  his  employer  heard  about  it.  Bear  in  mind 
it  was  not  the  Lord  Christ  who  commended  this  unjust 
steward.  It  was  “his  lord,”  his  employer,  his  owner,  who 
as  a  business  man  could  appreciate  the  shrewd  trick,  even 
though  it  was  a  dishonest  one.  And  “his  lord”  chuckled 
when  the  scheme  was  revealed  to  him,  and  said,  “Well, 
the  rascal  may  be  dishonest,  but  he  is  certainly  shrewd.” 


HEAVEN  IN  THE  MAKING 


65 


And  then  Our  Lord  speaks.  These  dishonest  men  show 
more  real  foresight  in  providing  for  their  future  than  was 
manifested  by  Christ’s  disciples.  “The  children  of  this 
world  are  wiser  in  their  generation  than  the  children  of 
light.”  These  crooks,  though  the  range  of  their  vision 
was  short,  had  more  foresight  than  His  own  followers. 
They,  with  the  longer  range  of  the  infinite  hereafter, 
should  emulate,  not  the  dishonesty,  but  the  foresight,  of 
this  superintendent.  We  might  fairly  paraphrase  the  text 
thus :  “I  say  unto  you,  Make  to  yourselves  friends  by 
means  of  the  mammon  of  unrighteousness  ;  that,  when  it 
shall  fail,  they  may  receive  you  into  everlasting  habita¬ 
tions.” 

“Make  to  yourselves  friends.”  That  is  heaven  in  the 
making.  Anxious  mourners  often  come  to  their  pastors 
with  an  old  question  about  the  recognition  of  friends  in 
heaven.  Why,  to  Jesus  the  recognition  of  friends  was  the 
very  stuff  that  heaven  is  made  of.  To  him  the  first 
glimpse  of  the  blessed  future  is  the  radiant  vision  of  those 
whom  we  have  loved  long  since  and  lost  awhile.  Heaven 
is  interpreted  in  terms  of  friendship.  We  are  enriching 
our  future  life  every  time  we  make  a  friend. 

There  is  much  critical  curiosity  because  we  have  no  light 
upon  the  place  of  a  future  life.  Let  us  think  of  it  as  a 
state  rather  than  a  place.  There  may  be  many,  many 
places,  diversified  conditions,  infinitely  varified  localities. 
But  the  one  constant  factor,  the  blessed  binding  truth 
which  runs  through  it  all,  is  the  thought  of  social  group¬ 
ings.  For  God’s  sake  let  us  have  done  with  this  pain¬ 
ful  notion  of  heaven  as  a  series  of  solemn-faced  saints 
sitting  in  rows !  Let  us  have  done,  too,  with  the  idea  of 
heaven  ushering  our  loved  ones  immediately  into  the  in- 


66 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


timate  fellowship  of  Socrates  or  Moses  or  David.  I 
respect  these  ancient  worthies,  but  in  the  nature  of  things 
I  cannot  love  them  as  I  do  my  own.  I  think  they  have 
gone  on  to  further  stages  of  spiritual  evolution.  I  think 
they  “fight  on,  fare  ever  there  as  here.”  I  like  to  be-* 
lieve  that  while  methods  of  communication  across  the 
generations  will  be  infinitely  easier,  yet  that  our  intimate 
fellowships  will  be  with  our  own.  I  remember  how  dear 
old  Dr.  Cuyler  used  to  say,  “I  don’t  want  to  go  to  heaven ; 
I  want  to  stay  down  here  with  the  folks.”  But  the  beau¬ 
tiful  assurance  of  Jesus  is  that  when  we  go  to  heaven 
we  stay  with  the  folks,  and  that  that  is  the  very  thing 
that  makes  it  heaven. 

You  will  instantly  see  with  what  infinitely  tender  wis¬ 
dom  Jesus  turns  our  thought  from  the  place  to  the  at¬ 
mosphere  of  the  future  life.  The  place  without  the  at¬ 
mosphere  matters  little.  I  went  back  to  my  birthplace  not 
long  ago.  The  house  is  still  there,  and  the  barn,  and  the 
fields,  and  the  orchard,  and  the  little  stream  where  I  used 
to  play  as  a  boy.  But  I  came  away  sore  and  heavy 
hearted.  The  place  was  there,  but  the  folks  were  gone. 
The  location  was  nothing,  the  atmosphere  was  everything. 
As  the  words  of  the  old  song  put  it : 

“What’s  this  dull  town  to  me? 

Robin’s  not  near.” 

You  might  picture  heaven  with  golden  streets  and  pearly 
gates  and  noble  temples.  It  would  be  a  dull  town  if  those 
we  loved  were  not  there.  How  wisely  and  tenderly  Jesus 
turns  us  from  physical  descriptions  to  spiritual  atmosphere 
and  to  the  one  great  splendid  assurance  which  crowns  it 
all,  that  our  heaven  is  built  by  the  hand  of  a  Christ-like 


HEAVEN  IN  THE  MAKING  67 

love  which  adds  new  beauty  and  splendor  to  our  celestial 
city  every  time  we  make  a  friend. 

But  why  the  talk  of  making  friends  by  the  use  of 
money,  and  why  is  money  spoken  of  on  its  evil  side,  as 
the  “mammon  of  unrighteousness  ?”  Partly  because  He  was 
talking  to  publicans,  and  partly  in  playful  reference  to 
the  unjust  steward  himself.  Money  to  him  had  been  the 
mammon  of  unrighteousness  because  he  had  used  it  dis¬ 
honestly  and  selfishly.  “Let  us,”  says  Jesus,  “take  this 
thing  which  in  the  hand  of  a  bad  man  was  the  mammon  of 
unrighteousness,  and  use  it  so  honestly  and  so  unselfishly 
that  we  can  transform  it  into  heavenly  purposes.  Emu¬ 
lating  the  foresight  of  the  dishonest  steward,  let  us  replace 
his  selfishness  with  unselfishness,  so  that  the  money  he 
used  so  badly  may  by  use  be  translated  into  the  coin 
current  of  the  banks  of  heaven.” 

Moreover,  Jesus  knew  human  nature  well  enough  to 
realize  how  vital  an  “acid  test”  the  use  of  money  is  in 
a  Christian  life.  He  does  not  think  it  the  greatest  of  our 
possessions.  In  fact,  in  this  very  passage  He  counts  it  the 
“very  least”  of  our  possessions.  But  He  assumes  that  if 
a  man  is  faithful  in  the  use  of  that  which  is  least  he  will 
be  capable  of  the  same  fidelity  in  the  largest  things  of  life. 
It  is  literally  true  that  our  use  of  money  is  one  of  the 
surest  indications  of  the  depth  and  intensity  and  funda¬ 
mental  honesty  of  our  Christianity. 

How  homely  and  practical  this  makes  our  every  thought 
of  heaven.  I  referred  at  the  beginning  to  criticisms  of  the 
Christian  pulpit.  Let  us  now  admit  that  our  preaching  of 
the  other  world  has  often  been  mystical  moonshine.  He 
made  it  as  practical  as  the  signing  of  a  check.  When  you 
fill  it  out  in  your  business  office  the  date  points  back  to  the 


68 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


birth  of  Christ,  and  the  object  for  which  you  write  that 
check  may  point  forward  to  the  heaven  that  awaits  you 
over  yonder.  Every  day,  at  the  desk  or  in  the  factory  or 
the  school,  in  business  life,  in  social  life,  your  heaven  is  in 
the  making.  Every  time  you  determine  whether  the  re¬ 
sources  God  has  put  in  your  hand  shall  be  used  unselfishly 
or  selfishly,  you  are  enriching  or  impoverishing  the  glory 
of  future  immortality.  By  the  commonest  deeds,  by  the 
cup  of  cold  water,  by  the  little  help,  by  the  Christlike 
spirit  which  brings  us  into  Christlike  fellowship,  we  are 
building  up  the  riches  that  will  await  us  beyond  the  veil. 

I  have  been  told  that  on  a  beautiful  summer  morning 
nearly  a  century  ago  a  ship  came  into  New  York  harbor, 
bearing  on  its  deck  an  old  man  surrounded  by  a  little  com¬ 
pany  of  friends.  He  perceived  that  the  shore  line  was 
blazing  with  flags  and  decorations,  and  inquired  the  reason 
of  it.  His  friends  replied  that  New  York  was  doubtless 
holding  some  patriotic  celebration.  As  they  drew  nearer 
the  booming  of  cannon  and  the  music  of  bands  was  heard, 
and  the  old  man’s  wonderment  increased.  His  friends  ex¬ 
plained  again  that  New  York  must  be  observing  some 
great  national  holiday.  And  it  is  said  that  he  inquired  of 
them  a  little  later  if  they  knew  some  modest  tavern  where 
he  might  find  entertainment  in  New  York;  and  how  he 
might  make  his  way  to  Philadelphia — assuming  with 
childlike  anxiety  that  he  must  care  for  himself  upon  land¬ 
ing.  But  soon  a  little  boat  came  out  to  meet  them.  The 
Mayor  of  New  York,  with  a  company  of  city  and  state 
officials,  stepped  on  board  and  came  forward  to  greet  this 
old  man.  Utterly  bewildered,  he  turned  to  his  friends 
and  said,  “What  does  all  this  mean?”  And  they  said,  “Sire, 
do  you  not  understand  that  the  flags  and  the  decorations, 


HEAVEN  IN  THE  MAKING 


69 


the  roaring  of  the  cannon  and  the  music  of  the  bands  and 
the  greeting  of  these  officials  are  for  you?”  And  the  old 
man,  with  tears  streaming  down  his  cheeks,  said,  “All  this 
for  me?” 

Forty-seven  years  before,  as  a  young  man  with  wealth 
and  rank,  with  a  beautiful  young  wife,  and  every  luxury 
and  comfort — a  boy  of  only  nineteen — he  had  heard  the 
trumpet  call  of  human  freedom  from  across  the  Atlantic. 
He  had  gone  to  his  king  for  permission  to  come  to  Amer¬ 
ica.  The  king  had  forbidden  him,  had  even  imprisoned 
him  to  prevent  his  departure.  But  the  dauntless  boy,  es¬ 
caping  from  his  confinement,  had  stolen  out  of  France  in 
secret  and  sailed  to  America.  He  came  to  the  Continental 
Congress  and  said,  “Gentlemen,  I  do  not  want  money;  I 
do  not  want  a  commission;  I  only  want  the  privilege  of 
standing  side  by  side  with  George  Washington  in  his 
great  fight  for  human  freedom.”  And  the  Continental 
Congress  had  given  him  a  place  beside  George  Washing¬ 
ton,  and  through  those  long,  terrible  years,  side  by  side 
with  his  chief,  the  Marquis  de  Lafayette  had  risked  all 
that  a  man  holds  dear,  had  risked  his  life  again  and  again 
for  the  sake  of  America.  Was  it  any  wonder  that  when, 
forty-seven  years  later,  he  came  back,  every  man,  woman 
and  child  in  this  great  country  of  ours  was  his  friend? 

You  remember  how  Vachel  Lindsey  pictures  General 
Booth  entering  into  heaven?  I  would  like  to  have  seen 
Wilberforce  or  Charles  Spurgeon  or  Dwight  L.  Moody 
enter  heaven.  What  a  scene,  what  a  welcome,  when  a 
man  who  has  served  God  and  humanity  is  greeted  by  the 
great  company  of  those  whom  he  has  helped  and  uplifted, 
and  who  have  been  bound  to  him  by  ties  of  love  stronger 
than  hooks  of  steel !  Is  there  any  life  investment  better 


70 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


than  this?  Given  first  to  Christ — Christ  in  us  the  hope  of 
glory — then  in  the  love  of  Christ  let  us  serve  humanity. 
‘‘Make  to  yourselves  friends  by  means  of  the  mammon  of 
unrighteousness,  that  when  it  shall  fail  they  may  receive 
you  into  heavenly  habitations.” 

“How  should  I  conceive 

What  a  heaven  there  may  be?  Let  it  but  resemble 
Earth  myself  have  known!  No  bliss  that’s  finer,  fuller, 
Only — bliss  that  lasts,  they  say,  and  fain  would  I  believe.” 


VI. 


TRACKS  LEADING  BOTH  WAYS 

Text:  For  thou  wilt  not  leave  my  soul  to  Sheol; 

Neither  wilt  thou  suffer  thy  beloved  to  see  the  pit. 

— Psalm  16:10  (marginal  reading) 

There  is  an  old  fable  which  relates  the  story  of  a  fox 
hard-pressed  by  the  hunters  and  coming  to  the  mouth  of  a 
great  cave.  According  to  the  cunning  custom  of  his  kind 
he  studied  the  situation.  He  observed  the  tracks  of  many 
foxes  leading  into  the  cavern,  and  inferred  that  others 
had  sought  refuge  there ;  but  he  noted,  too,  that  while  the 
tracks  were  numerous,  they  were  all  leading  one  way. 
All  were  pointing  inward.  None  led  out.  Shrewdly 
judging  that,  while  he  might  easily  enter,  the  chances 
were  that  the  cave  held  some  devouring  monster  which 
would  destroy  him,  he  passed  on  in  search  of  other  refuge. 

The  old  fable,  in  one  aspect  at  least,  suggests  the  situ¬ 
ation  of  the  human  race.  Hard  pressed  in  the  great 
conflict  of  life,  we  are  confronted  by  a  dark  and  gloomy 
v  cavern  which  men  call  death.  The  primitive  mind  pic¬ 
tured  it  as  Sheol,  the  underworld  of  the  dead,  a  realm  of 
half  lights  and  negative  existence,  so  that  the  melancholy 
verdict  of  the  ancient  world  was  summed  up  in  the  voice 
which  cried  that  it  were  better  to  be  a  slave  on  earth  than 
a  king  among  the  shades.  But  we  have  no  option.  When 
the  day  comes  we  must  enter  whether  we  will  or  no.  And 
we  observe  that  the  tracks  are  all  leading  one  way.  It 


7i 


72 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


it  indeed  the  “undiscovered  country  from  whose  bourn 
no  traveler  returns.”  The  footsteps  of  our  well-beloved 
are  always  pointed  in,  never  out.  On  and  on  moves  the 
vast  concourse  of  humanity,  that  company  inconceivably 
immense,  human  hearts  like  muffled  drums  beating 
funeral  dirges  to  the  grave!  Ubi  sunt  qui  ante  nos f  None 
come  back  to  tell  us  how  they  fare ! 

Ever  since  the  dawn  of  history  the  human  mind  has 
grappled  with  the  great  problem  suggested  here.  Indeed, 
the  earliest  traces  of  humanity  upon  this  globe  show  with 
pathetic  clearness  that  the  mind  of  man  has  been  busy 
with  this  solemn  interrogation  ever  since  self-conscious 
intelligence  began.  And  still  we  confront  it,  unsatisfied, 
yet  unresting,  ignorant,  yet  insatiable.  What  shall  we  say 
about  it  today,  we  who  are  passing  down  toward  the 
cavern,  we  who  have  eagerly  searched  for  traces  but 
have  failed  to  find  an  indication  of  footsteps  coming  back 
from  the  undiscovered  country?  Let  us  face  the  question 
frankly  and  fearlessly,  without  deceiving  ourselves,  with¬ 
out  being  diverted  from  the  track  of  stern  thinking  by  the 
warmth  of  our  desires ;  and  yet  let  us  face  it  as  those  who 
know  that  the  meanings  of  life  are  larger  than  all  our 
little  logic-chopping  systems  can  take  in;  and  that  there 
may  be  truths  so  vital  and  elemental  as  to  be  too  large 
for  our  syllogisms  and  too  glorious  for  our  narrow  vision. 

It  is  fair  to  say,  first  of  all,  that  if  we  see  no  tracks 
leading  away  from  the  tomb,  yet  this  fact  is  not  at  all  con¬ 
clusive  evidence  that  there  is  no  way  out.  When  you 
enter  a  cave  there  is  nothing  to  prove  that  the  entrance 
you  use  is  the  only  exit.  There  may  be  others,  opening 
not  upon  the  landscape  which  you  have  just  left,  but  lead¬ 
ing  you  out  even  to  a  fairer  country  and  a  lovelier  prospect. 


TRACKS  LEADING  BOTH  WAYS 


73 


The  mere  fact  that  there  is  no  exit  from  the  grave  back 
to  this  life  which  we  are  now  leading,  is  by  no  means  a 
proof  that  there  is  no  outlet  toward  a  better  life. 

This  significant  consideration,  then,  is  our  starting  point. 
If  modern  science  cannot  prove  for  us  that  there  is  a 
future  life,  it  is  equally  sure  that  all  the  results  of  modern 
scientific  investigation  fail  to  prove  its  impossibilty.  I 
am  very  well  aware  of  the  fallacy  and  the  folly  involved  in 
quoting  “modern  science’’  as  though  its  voice  were  always 
consistent,  harmonious,  and  unmistakable.  There  are 
many  jangling  scientific  voices.  And  we  could  un¬ 
doubtedly  find  scholars  in  this  field  who  would  dogmatic¬ 
ally  deny  the  possibility  of  a  future  life.  But  we  speak 
here  of  the  scientist  at  his  best.  We  think  of  the  kindly, 
constructive  type,  human  like  ourselves,  loving  humanity 
and  hopeful  for  it,  yet  sternly  consecrated  to  the  truth 
as  he  sees  it.  We  think  of  that  scientist  who  most  re¬ 
sembles  the  wise  and  strong  and  kindly  physician,  hoping 
for  the  best  but  knowing  the  worst,  and  too  kind  to  be 
anything  but  frank.  I  believe  this  represents  the  large 
majority  of  earnest  scientific  investigators  in  the  modern 
world,  and  if  they  could  speak  to  us,  their  message  would 
be  something  like  this:  “We  cannot  undertake  to  furnish 
you  rigorous  scientific  proof  of  immortality.  It  lies  be¬ 
yond  our  field.  Our  business  is  to  study  physical  rela¬ 
tionships  in  the  light  of  pure  reason.  The  study  of  im¬ 
mortality  involves  those  great  spiritual  considerations 
which  we  are  not  fitted  to  evaluate.  But  we  can  help  you 
at  least  thus  far,  in  that  we  find  nothing  in  physical  science 
which  forbids  you  to  cherish  the  belief  in  personal  im¬ 
mortality.” 

It  is  true  that  fifty  years  ago  physical  science  seemed 


74 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


to  find  a  barrier  in  the  dependence  of  consciousness  on  the 
functioning  of  the  brain.  Without  the  normal  activity  of 
the  brain  cells  consciousness  was  impossible;  therefore  it 
was  hastily  assumed  that  the  brain  produced  the  con¬ 
sciousness,  and  that  what  it  had  thus  produced  must  neces¬ 
sarily  end  at  death.  But  it  was  soon  seen,  as  Professor 
William  James  pointed  out,  that  this  function  of  the  brain 
might  be  one  of  production,  or  it  might  be  one  of  trans¬ 
mission.  Cerebral  activity  might  be  in  a  sense  the  cause 
of  thought,  or  it  might  be  the  effect  of  it.  The  curtain 
shakes  when  the  wind  blows.  Take  away  the  curtain  and 
the  wind  might  blow  still,  but  you  would  not  be  aware  of 
it.  The  pipe  in  the  organ  functions  to  produce  the  music, 
but  this  is  a  function  of  transmission;  back  of  it  is  the 
air  from  the  bellows,  and  back  of  that  the  energy  of  the 
player.  It  is  conceivable  that  back  of  the  brain  lies  the 
energy  of  a  spiritual  personality  which  in  some  way  stimu¬ 
lates  the  activity  of  the  physical  organ.  Or,  to  change 
the  figure  a  little,  the  brain  may  be  the  instrument  upon 
which  the  spiritual  personality  plays,  and  when  the  in¬ 
strument  is  broken  and  destroyed,  the  player  may  find 
another  one.  This  fits  finely  with  Saint  Paul’s  dream  of 
this  present  body  of  humiliation  displaced  by  a  better  body, 
a  body  fitted  to  spiritual  uses.  He  conceived  that  the 
present  player  would  some  day  have  a  better  instrument 
through  which  to  express  himself,  that  one  might  throw 
his  five-dollar  fiddle  on  the  scrap  heap  and  learn  to  make 
melody  on  a  priceless  Stradivarius. 

This  view  is,  to  put  it  at  the  very  lowest,  equally  tenable 
with  the  other,  and  there  are  not  wanting  considerations 
tending  to  make  it  far  more  tenable.  For  instance,  biolo¬ 
gists  tell  us  that  human  thought  uses  only  one  lobe  of  the 


TRACKS  LEADING  BOTH  WAYS 


75 


brain.  If  the  brain  automatically  produced  thought  would 
it  not  be  likely  that  both  hemispheres  would  function  in  this 
way?  Is  it  not  the  more  probable  that  the  mysterious 
spiritual  energy  which  for  want  of  a  better  name  we  call 
personality,  has  taken  up  and  trained  one  half  of  the  brain 
to  its  purpose,  leaving  the  other  half  to  control  the  purely 
mechanical  processes  of  one  side  of  the  body?  Dr. 
William  Hanna  Thompson,  the  noted  author  of  “Brain 
and  Personality,”  has  declared  that  this  personal  energy 
has  even  shown  its  ability,  in  case  of  injury  to  one  area 
of  brain  cells,  to  take  up  and  train  other  brain  cells  to  its 
purpose.  So  that  the  scientist  reassures  us  in  this  verdict, 
that  far  from  finding  personal  consciousness  absolutely 
dependent  on  the  function  of  the  brain,  there  are  not 
wanting  hints  showing  it  to  be  a  power  capable  of  adapting 
and  using  other  media  of  expression  as  it  has  adapted 
and  used  the  brain. 

While  unquestionably  our  attitude  toward  the  results 
of  psychic  investigation  should  be  one  of  caution  and  re¬ 
serve,  yet  enough  has  been  discovered  in  this  field  to  as¬ 
sure  us  of  the  communication  between  mind  and  mind, 
independent  of  the  sense  media  and  of  ordinary  physical 
causation.  Granted  that  they  are  all  mundane  minds, 
still  the  case  against  a  physical  basis  for  thought  is  unas¬ 
sailable.  All  that  we  are  learning  in  this  mysterious  field 
ranges  the  scientist  on  the  side  of  spiritual  interpretations 
in  mental  science. 

Moreover,  science  will  give  us  an  additional  encourage¬ 
ment  in  a  study  of  the  upward  movement  in  nature.  We 
shall  find  nature  working  steadily  toward  a  goal  which  ap¬ 
parently  is  individual  personality,  and  in  this  process  the 
method  seems  to  involve  the  preservation  of  that  which 


76 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


has  gained  survival  value.  But  this  preservation  is  ac¬ 
complished,  not  by  leaving  it  in  its  old  environment,  but 
by  lifting  it  into  a  new  and  better  one.  In  this  great 
process  death  is  the  servant  of  life.  It  continually  assists 
in  breaking  up  the  old  environment  and  freeing  survival 
value  for  new  and  more  fitting  environment.  The  seed 
must  die  that  the  life  of  the  plant  may  come  to  its  full 
beauty  and  fruition.  And  it  is  a  strictly  scientific  analogy 
which  prepares  us  to  believe  that  death  may  come  as 
the  servant  of  life,  breaking  up  the  old  imperfect  bodily 
environment  that  it  may  free  the  soul  with  its  eternal 
survival  value;  free  it  for  a  higher  and  nobler  setting. 
This  may  be  no  more  than  analogy,  and  may  carry  us  only 
to  the  border  of  probability,  but  it  is  strictly  scientific 
analogy,  and  out  of  it  emerges  an  equally  scientific  prob¬ 
ability. 

There  is  an  additional  encouragement  in  the  study  of 
identity  and  memory.  I  can  remember  my  third  birth¬ 
day.  Certain  scenes  and  incidents  of  that  day  are  as  clear 
to  me  as  though  it  had  been  yesterday.  Yet  the  scientist 
has  now  shown  me  that  this  memory  and  personal  identity 
have  persisted  through  scores  of  different  brains,  so  far 
as  mere  physical  identity  is  concerned.  There  has  never 
been  any  possible  explanation  of  this  on  the  basis  of 
materialism.  On  the  contrary,  it  points  with  undeniable 
clearness  to  a  personal  identity  in  some  form  of  spiritual 
energy  which  has  taken  up  and  trained  the  successive 
brain  cells  to  their  task. 

Consider,  too,  the  immense  encouragement  that  has 
come  through  the  modern  analysis  of  matter  itself,  an 
analysis  which  has  broken  down  the  atom  into  the  elec¬ 
tron,  and  has  given  a  conception  of  physical  ultimates, 


TRACKS  LEADING  BOTH  WAYS 


77 


not  in  terms  of  hard,  stable  substance,  but  of  fluid  energy. 
At  the  very  basis  of  the  electron  lies  a  concept  much 
nearer  the  energy  of  mind  than  the  energy  of  mechanics. 
We  feel  ourselves  approaching  that  mightiest  force  in 
all  the  world,  personal  energy  aware  of  itself.  And  the 
more  nearly  we  approach  that,  the  stronger  becomes  the 
presumption  that,  by  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  ener¬ 
gy,  personality  can  never  be  destroyed. 

These  may  be  set  down  as  mere  probabilities.  There 
has  been  much  contemptuous  reference  in  these  latter 
times  to  “scientific  guesses.”  It  may  be  worth  while  for 
us  to  remind  ourselves  that  most  scientific  holdings  were 
guesses  at  the  beginning.  A  guess  grows  into  a  possi¬ 
bility  and  a  possibility  into  a  working  hypothesis.  Feed 
a  guess  with  enough  indications  and  hints, — look  you,  it 
begins  to  expand  into  a  working  theory.  All  proofs  are 
more  or  less  relative.  The  sole  question  about  a  given 
theory  is  whether  the  balance  of  probabilities  is  for  it 
rather  than  for  any  other  view,  whether  it  satisfies  more 
data  and  avoids  more  difficulties  than  any  other. 

In  this  sense  it  is  strictly  conservative  to  say  that  rev¬ 
erent  modern  scientists  are  expanding  for  us  a  line  of 
probabilities  which,  as  the  years  go  by,  will,  I  believe, 
deepen  and  color  into  trustworthy  convictions  that  life 
shall  live  for  evermore.  Have  we  not  reached  that  time 
when  the  age-long  attitude  of  suspicion  between  the  sci¬ 
entific  investigator  and  the  spiritual  investigator  should 
have  an  end?  God  help  us  to  understand  that  the  rev¬ 
erent  scientific  man  is  our  friend  and  not  our  enemy.  We 
ought  to  meet  him,  not  with  suspicion,  but  with  sympathy 
and  confidence.  The  very  motto  upon  the  seal  of  The 
College  of  Wooster  is  our  guide.  The  truths  revealed 


78 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


in  the  Bible  and  those  truths  revealed  by  the  telescope 
and  microscope  are  for  us  “ex  uno  fonte,”  from  one  foun¬ 
tain.  If  the  day  should  ever  come  when  we  say  to  a 
young  man  or  to  a  young  woman,  “Take  your  choice. 
Either  give  up  your  book  of  physical  science  or  surrender 
your  Bible/’  we  would  be  false  to  the  traditions  of  those 
noble  clear-visioned  men  who  laid  broad  and  deep  the 
foundations  of  scholarship  in  training  for  service ! 

Thus  far  the  way  has  at  least  been  cleared  for  deeper 
considerations.  There  are  no  barriers  to  the  belief  that 
there  may  be  a  way  out  of  the  gloomy  cavern.  On  the 
contrary,  there  are,  as  we  have  seen,  strong  presumptive 
probabilities  that  there  will  be  a  way  out.  Even  physical 
science  itself  has  furnished  us  with  these  probabilities. 
Now,  however,  we  must  step  beyond  the  range  of  that 
study  which  confines  itself  to  physical  relationships.  The 
scientist  must  step  back  for  the  deeper  vision,  for  the 
things  that  eye  hath  not  seen  nor  ear  heard.  Scientific 
and  philosophical  speculations  will  never  satisfy  the  hu¬ 
man  heart.  One  may  read  Fechner  and  Bjorklund  and 
Ostwald  and  Osier,  and  even  James  and  Flammarion, 
until  he  grows  wearied  and  soul-sick  with  finespun  theo¬ 
ries  of  cell  relationships  to  the  body,  of  “thresholds” 
and  subliminal  functions,  of  mechanical  tests  and  meta¬ 
physical  subtleties.  Yes,  one  may  follow  the  track  of  the 
“psychic  group,”  follow  them  with  a  measure  of  sym¬ 
pathy,  perhaps  with  a  mild  tolerance  for  the  conviction 
which  Ruskin  once  expressed  to  Holman  Hunt,  “I  know 
there  is  much  relative  fraud  and  stupidity  connected  with 
it,  but  underneath  there  is  enough,  I  am  sure,  to  con¬ 
vince  us  that  there  is  a  personal  life  independent  of  the 
body,  and  with  this  once  proved  I  have  no  further  in- 


TRACKS  LEADING  BOTH  WAYS 


7  9 


terest  in  spiritism.”  But  all  this  reading  will  leave  you 
cold  and  unsatisfied.  It  will  give  you  at  the  best  but  a 
“pale  smile”  of  philosophical  optimism,  instead  of  that 
robust,  full-blooded,  glorious  New  Testament  “hope.” 
We — God  forgive  us — have  allowed  that  word  to  grow 
shrunken  and  feeble  and  apologetic.  But  it  rang  like  the 
blare  of  a  trumpet  when  Paul  said,  “Christ  in  you,  the 
hope  of  glory.” 

Hear  me  then.  The  conviction  that  there  is  a  way  out 
is  spiritual.  It  must  be  spiritually  perceived  and  proved. 
One  of  the  greatest  intellectual  giants  that  this  country 
ever  produced  said  to  me,  “I  cannot  read  Wordsworth’s 
‘Intimations  of  Immortality’  without  breaking.  It  is  too 
big  for  me.  It  masters  me.”  I  fancy  that  Wordsworth 
in  that  noble  poem  was  getting  at  the  heart  of  a  great 
conviction  more  definitely  than  all  the  scholars  and  all  the 
science  and  all  the  philosophies  can  ever  hope  to  do. 
Look  for  a  moment  at  the  spiritual  considerations. 

Consider  for  one  thing  the  incomplete  range  which  this 
life  furnishes  to  human  personality.  Let  us  understand 
once  for  all  that  Man  the  Person  is  infinitely  larger  than 
homo  the  animal.  Says  an  eminent  modern  writer:  “In 
every  other  animal  its  physical  development  explains 
everything,  but  nothing  physical  explains  Man.  It  is 
foolish  to  seek  in  the  human  brain  for  that  explanation, 
because  this  is  closely  patterned  after  the  brain  of  the 
chimpanzee  which  contains  every  lobe  and  lobule  found 
in  the  human  brain.  But  to  all  eternity  the  chimpanzee 
with  his  brain  could  not  overtake  Man.  The  light  of  the 
sun  takes  eight  minutes  to  reach  the  earth,  while  it  takes 
the  light  of  Alpha  Centauri,  the  nearest  to  us  of  the  fixed 
stars,  four  years  and  a  half  to  do  the  same  thing.  But 


8o 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


this  is  an  imperfect  comparison  with  which  to  illustrate 
the  difference  between  the  animal  Homo  and  Man.” 

Considered  spiritually,  is  there  even  a  possibility  that 
the  span  of  Man  the  Person  should  be  measured  by  the 
span  of  the  animal  Homo  ?  Contrast  their  ranges,  both  in 
time  and  space.  The  animal  begins  to  grow  old  at  twen¬ 
ty-five.  Bodily  co-ordinations  are  never  quite  so  perfect 
after  the  so-called  “athletic  age”  is  past.  The  range  of 
the  animal  is  short,  but  the  range  of  the  personal  Man  is 
practically  infinite.  Mr.  Arthur  Brisbane,  in  a  recent 
editorial,  speaks  of  the  almost  incalculable  distance  be¬ 
tween  the  earth  and  Betelgeuse.  The  moral  he  draws 
therefrom  is  the  utter  insignificance  of  man.  On  the  con¬ 
trary,  the  moral  to  be  drawn  is  the  amazing  significance 
and  size  of  the  man.  Has  he  not  calculated  what  was 
almost  incalculable?  The  mind  that  can  span  the  dis¬ 
tance  between  the  earth  and  Betelgeuse  is  infinitely  great¬ 
er  than  the  distance,  greater  than  either  the  earth  or 
Betelgeuse.  Infinite  ranges  of  space  and  time  are  the 
measure  of  personal  possibilities.  To  suppose  that  this 
majestic  spiritual  organization  should  have  a  range  of  pos¬ 
sibility  no  greater  than  that  of  his  animal  body  is,  spirit¬ 
ually  speaking,  absurd. 

“To  man  propose  this  test — 

Thy  body  at  its  best, 

How  far  can  that  project  thy  soul  on  its  lone  way?” 

To  make  the  two  of  equal  range  would  be  comparable 
to  the  purchase  of  two  engines.  One  would  be,  let  us 
say,  a  fifty-cent  toy  affair,  and  the  other  a  five-thou- 
sand-dollar  Packard  car.  The  little,  cheaply-constructed 
toy  runs  around  a  few  short  circles  and  goes  to  the  junk 
heap.  Shall  we  use  that  expensive  automobile  in  the  same 


TRACKS  LEADING  BOTH  WAYS 


81 


way?  Just  a  few  little  circles  and  then  the  junk  heap? 
Infinitely  more  absurd  would  it  be  to  limit  the  range  of 
the  human  person  by  the  range  of  the  animal  homo. 
Said  Victor  Hugo,  “A  tomb  is  not  a  blind  alley;  it  is  a 
thoroughfare.  It  closes  with  the  twilight,  to  open  with 
the  dawn ....  I  feel  that  I  have  not  said  the  thousandth 
part  of  what  is  in  me ....  The  thirst  for  infinity  proves 
infinity.” 

Moreover,  if  all  human  footsteps  ended  at  the  tomb 
we  would  confront  another  spiritual  impossibility.  Not 
only  individual  incompleteness,  but  social  incompleteness, 
would  meet  us  squarely.  Bear  in  mind  that  we  are  deal¬ 
ing  with  spiritual  considerations  and  that  these,  to  a 
spiritual  man,  are  as  complete  and  as  convincing  as  any 
physical  or  mechanical  argument  to  the  scientific  mind. 
It  is  simply  impossible  to  spiritual  thought  that  we  should 
face  a  universe  where  we  must  abandon  all  sense  of  jus¬ 
tice.  Without  some  such  principle  society  would  break 
down  in  chaos.  Do  you  tell  us  there  could  be  equity  in 
a  world  where  human  brutes  torture  and  crucify  and  slay 
helpless  innocence,  while  the  criminal  and  the  victim  alike 
share  exactly  the  same  fate  in  death?  Yes,  even  more 
poignant  is  the  dreadful  dilemma  where  often  the  crim¬ 
inal  is  spared  to  long  life  while  the  victim  passes  out  into 
the  night.  Had  the  brave  boy  who  gave  his  life  for  his 
country  no  compensation  as  over  against  the  slacker  who 
nursed  his  worthless  life  in  the  safety  of  his  home?  If 
there  were  no  future  life,  the  slacker  has  all  the  best  of  it. 
He  has  lived  years  in  ease  and  comfort,  while  the  martyr 
has  snuffed  out  his  life  in  vain.  As  a  warm-hearted  Eng¬ 
lish  physician  has  put  it,  “Are  these  brave  boys  to  be 
penalized  for  their  bravery  in  the  defense  of  the  right, 


82 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


while  the  self-indulgent  gourmand  who  hides  behind  the 
fatty  heart,  the  result  of  his  own  vices,  which  protects 
him  from  being  called  upon  for  service,  extracts  the  full 
enjoyment  out  of  life?”  It  is  quite  impossible  to  believe 
that  such  obvious  unfairness  can  satisfy  the  demands  of 
ordinary  justice.  I  remember  how  Stopford  Brooke  has 
put  that  spiritual  dilemma  in  a  terrible  poem,  yet  one 
which  describes  an  all  too  common  phase  of  human  life : 

“Three  men  went  out  one  summer  night, 

No  care  had  they  or  aim, 

And  dined  and  drank.  ‘Ere  we  go  home 
We’ll  have,’  they  said,  ‘a  game? 

Three  girls  began  that  summer  night 
A  life  of  endless  shame, 

And  went  through  drink,  disease,  and  death 
As  swift  as  racing  flame. 

Lawless  and  homeless,  foul,  they  died; 

Rich,  loved  and  praised,  the  men : 

But  when  they  all  shall  meet  with  God, 

And  Justice  speaks — what  then?” 

If  there  were  no  place  where  these  souls,  criminal  and 
victim  alike,  can  meet  their  God,  then  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  justice  speaking  in  the  universe.  Her  voice  has 
been  but  an  illusion.  The  very  foundations  of  equity 

a 

crumble  beneath  us. 

Even  stronger  is  the  case  presented  on  the  firm  foun¬ 
dation  of  that  greatest  self-evidencing  reality  in  the  world, 
the  reality  of  love.  Nor  is  the  fundamental  strength  of 
that  reality  apparent  when  we  deal  with  it  as  a  mere  form 
of  sentimental  appeal.  It  might  thus  degenerate  into  a 
begging  of  the  question,  an  effusive  use  of  the  emotions 


TRACKS  LEADING  BOTH  WAYS 


83 


rather  than  a  solid  and  well-ordered  foundation  for  clear 
thinking.  Unfortunately  it  has  often  been  so  used,  until 
the  rigorous  minds  of  hard-headed  men  have  revolted. 

Look  at  love  then,  not  under  the  aspect  of  rose-colored 
romance.  Look  at  it  as  the  one  practical  program  which 
is  able  to  save  the  world  today.  Study  writers  like  Mr. 
H.  G.  Wells  and  Mr.  George  Bernard  Shaw,  who  have 
viewed  life  through  the  cynical  eyes  of  the  newspaper 
reporter  or  the  satirist,  and  you  will  find  that  under  the 
impact  of  the  terrible  world  war  these  men,  and  hundreds 
like  them,  have  come  to  realize  that  “the  old  ideas  and 
ideals  of  mankind  have  proved  wholly  false,  that  a  world 
of  power  has  crushed  itself  by  its  own  weight,  and  that 
only  in  the  brotherhood  of  man  (or  universal  love)  can 
the  world  be  saved  from  a  ruin  which  is  inevitable  if  it 
go  on  as  it  has  gone.”  This  same  conclusion  has  drawn 
Papini,  the  bitter  Italian  atheist,  to  the  feet  of  Christ. 
Now  these  men  have  viewed  love  not  at  all  in  its  senti¬ 
mental  aspects,  but  as  the  absolute  prerequisite  to  the 
continued  existence  of  a  civilized  world. 

Not  less  does  love  evidence  itself  as  essential  to  the 
very  thought  of  our  origins.  Water  cannot  rise  higher 
than  its  source,  nor  can  love  in  us  overmatch  the  love 
of  that  great  source  which  produced  us.  We  who  are 
capable  of  father-passion  and  mother-passion  feel  our 
way  back  by  a  sure  and  strong  inference  to  a  Love  that 
made  us.  It  is  wildly  inconceivable  that  a  loveless  uni¬ 
verse  of  hard  mechanism  could  have  produced  the  father 
who  “pitieth  his  children”  and  who,  forgetful  of  his  own 
ease  and  comfort,  will  sacrifice  for  them;  or  the  mother 
who  with  a  splendid  passion  of  self-abnegation  deliberate¬ 
ly  gives  her  life  for  her  dear  ones.  These  are  realities, 


84 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


and  back  of  them  we  must  put  an  origin  sufficient  to 
account  for  them. 

So  it  comes  to  pass  that  in  basing  any  conviction  upon 
love  we  rest,  not  on  a  foundation  of  sand,  but  on  one 
of  immovable  rock.  Obviously,  if  this  great  factor  be  real 
and  fundamental  in  the  universe,  it  is  wildly  impossible 
to  think  of  extinction  at  the  grave.  For  that  would  in- 
involve  the  ruthless  denial  of  all  that  love  has  taught  us. 
When  Charlotte  Bronte  lay  upon  her  deathbed  and 
looked  into  the  face  of  her  husband,  she  cried,  “Oh,  I  am 
not  going  to  die,  am  I  ?  He  will  not  separate  us,  we  have 
been  so  happy.”  Such  is  the  cry  of  love  in  every  age  and 
time.  He  will  not  separate  us,  we  have  been  so  happy! 
This  is  not  only  the  plaintive  cry  of  longing,  it  is  also 
the  triumphant  shout  of  conviction.  It  pleads  not  alone 
the  somewhat  timid  spirit  of  Tennyson’s  pensive  hope 
that  he  would  yet  see  his  Pilot  face  to  face.  Rather  does 
it  ring  with  Browning’s  buoyant  assurance  that  “greets 
the  unseen  with  a  cheer.” 

Now  all  of  these  spirit  realities  will  appeal  to  us  in  a 
very  exact  proportion  to  our  conviction  that  the  universe 
is  a  reasonable  one.  Certainly  if  it  be  not  reasonable  then 
all  science  and  philosophy  will  go  by  the  board.  Men 
may  choose  to  believe  in  a  world  of  chance,  but  if  they 
choose  to  inhabit  that  dreary  desert  let  them  understand 
quite  clearly  in  advance  that  they  must  live  in  a  world 
where  all  the  ordered  results  of  human  thinking  must  be 
relegated  to  the  dust  heap,  and  where  all  science  and 
philosophy  will  be  a  vanishing  mirage.  If  we  turn  our 
back  on  that  world,  however,  and  can  assume  a  reasonable 
universe,  it  will  be  impossible  even  to  dream  that  human 
personality,  the  goal  and  crown  of  all  God’s  creative 


TRACKS  LEADING  BOTH  WAYS 


85 


energy,  should  be  produced  only  that  it  might  be  ruth¬ 
lessly  destroyed.  Browning’s  Caliban  might  conceive  of 
such  a  thing,  because  in  sheer  wanton  cruelty  it  might  ap¬ 
peal  to  his  crazy  whim  that  a  worthless  life  should  be  pre¬ 
served  and  a  worthy  one  destroyed.  But  Caliban’s 
Setebos  could  be  only  the  product  of  a  crazed  brain.  If 
we  think  reasonably  we  cannot  even  imagine  a  God  who 
would  do  such  a  thing.  Last  year  in  Florida  I  saw  an 
alligator  which  experts  assured  me  has  lived  far  beyond 
the  span  of  any  human  life.  It  sleeps  for  months  at  a 
time,  wakes  to  eat,  and  having  eaten  sleeps  again.  Yet 
this  insensate  brute  has  outlived  the  earth  career  of  the 
noblest  soul  which  Almighty  God  has  ever  created.  I 
watched  that  repulsive  monster,  and  then  I  thought  of 
Raphael  and  Shelley  and  fair  John  Keats,  those  lovely 
boys  who  passed  out  into  the  shadows  ere  the  cup  of  life’s 
wine  had  more  than  touched  their  lips.  Surely  it  would 
seem  to  any  reasoning  mind  that  a  universe  which  gave 
a  vast  range  of  time  to  an  unthinking  brute  and  a  few 
brief  years  to  John  Keats  would  be  a  crazy  man’s  world 
— if  there  were  no  life  beyond. 

In  the  city  of  Pittsburgh  there  lived  for  many  years  a 
noble  man  of  science  and  a  beautiful  character,  Dr.  John 
Brashear  of  gracious  memory.  He  was  “Uncle”  John 
Brashear  to  everybody  in  western  Pennsylvania,  known 
the  world  over  among  scientists,  and  loved  wherever  he 
was  known.  He  worked  once  for  two  years  and  a  half 
in  making  a  single  lens  for  a  telescope.  He  toiled  upon 
that  lens  day  and  night,  bestowing  infinite,  loving  care  in 
shaping  that  piece  of  glass  until  it  caught  up  with  perfect 
accuracy  and  beauty  the  vision  of  the  heavens  above  us. 
Suppose,  after  doing  this,  after  shaping  and  polishing  for 


86 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


many  patient  years  a  perfect  lens,  he  had  then  dashed  it 
to  pieces  upon  the  rocks.  What  would  have  happened? 
Unquestionably  this  man  would  have  had  an  investigation 
as  to  his  sanity.  Such  an  act  of  ruthless  destruction 
would  not  have  been  reasonable.  We  should  have  said 
at  once,  “The  man  is  insane.”  And  if  we  suppose  that 
God  has  picked  out  of  His  immense  store  of  raw  material 
the  makings  of  a  man,  and  then  has  kept  shaping  and 
finishing  and  polishing  through  countless  aeons  until  He 
has  at  last  achieved  a  human  personality — a  soul  with  its 
infinite  capacity  to  reflect  the  very  glory  of  heaven,  to 
contemplate  God — and  then  that  He  dashes  that  soul  down 
to  eternal  destruction  along  with  the  very  raw  material 
of  the  animal  world  out  of  which  it  was  created,  can 
we  for  one  moment  say  that  we  live  in  a  reasonable  uni¬ 
verse  ?  And  I  repeat  that  if  we  do  not  live  in  a  reasonable 
universe,  then  we  must  veto  all  science  and  all  philosophy, 
as  well  as  all  religion. 

This  brings  us  to  a  consideration  even  more  unes- 
capable  than  reason  itself.  That  is  the  pressure  of  life. 
Larger  than  the  sum  of  all  thinking  is  the  life  about 
which  we  try  to  think.  Life  itself  demands  that  it  must 
live  for  evermore  if  we  live  it  normally  here.  The  idea 
that  men  can  go  out  into  this  world  of  ours  and  do  their 
best  without  any  regard  to  whether  there  is  a  future  world 
or  not,  is  the  most  colossally  foolish  notion  that  ever 
seized  the  human  mind.  When  Thoreau  lay  dying  at 
Concord,  his  friend  Parker  Pillsbury  sat  by  his  bedside; 
and  he  said,  “Henry,  you  are  so  near  to  the  border  now, 
can  you  see  anything  on  the  other  side?”  And  Thoreau 
answered,  “One  world  at  a  time,  Parker!”  Now  while 
a  man  can  see  only  one  world  at  a  time,  yet  I  submit  that 


TRACKS  LEADING  BOTH  WAYS 


87 


unless  he  expects  another  world  he  can  never  rightly  live 
in  this  one.  It  is  true,  this  motive  is  not  consciously  in 
the  minds  of  many  right-living  men  and  women.  But  this 
is  only  because  that  motive  has  been  so  thoroughly  in- 
wrought  into  the  ideals  of  society  that  people  are  uncon¬ 
sciously  acting  upon  them.  Whatever  the  protests  of  Pro¬ 
fessor  Huxley,  the  fact  is  that  if  one  shared  the  fate  of 
the  ox  it  would  not  be  long  until  he  lived  essentially  the 
life  of  the  ox.  Said  Goethe  in  his  last  days,  “You  ask 
me  what  are  my  grounds  for  this  belief  ?  The  greatest  is 
this,  that  we  cannot  do  without  it.” 

Now  by  these  and  many  kindred  considerations  none 
the  less  real  and  practical  because  they  are  spiritual  in 
their  nature,  we  are  led  irresistibly  to  the  conclusion: 
“There  must  be  a  way  out  of  the  cave.  There  must  be! 
There  must  be !” 

“My  own  dim  life  should  teach  me  this 
That  life  shall  live  for  evermore, 

Else  earth  is  darkness  at  the  core, 

And  dust  and  ashes  all  that  is.” 

The  old  psalmist  of  our  text,  conscious  of  God,  felt  the 
irresistible  conviction  that  his  destiny  was  bigger  and  better 
than  anything  limited  by  the  grave.  He  felt  that  it  was  even 
more  splendid  than  could  be  satisfied  by  the  prevalent 
conceptions  of  the  future  life  in  his  own  time.  The  pal¬ 
lid  ghost  of  a  future  life  in  Sheol  would  never  do.  Con¬ 
sequently  he  imagined  that  in  some  way  God  would  keep 
him  from  entering  the  pit.  “Thou  wilt  not  suffer  thy 
beloved  to  see  the  pit.”  It  may  be  that  he  thought  God 
would  save  him  from  the  experience  of  death  as  He  did 
Enoch.  The  form  of  his  expression  was  undoubtedly 
mistaken,  but  the  essence  of  it  true  and  real.  For  he 


88 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


knew  that  better  things  than  the  grave  must  await  those 
who  know  the  fellowship  of  the  eternal  God. 

Catch  the  gleam  now  of  the  rising  sun  on  Easter 
Morning!  Our  hearts  have  said,  “there  must  be  a  way 
out.”  Easter  Morning  says,  “There  is  a  way  out.”  We 
have  been  impelled  by  irresistible  forces  to  believe  that 
there  must  be  tracks  leading  both  ways,  tracks  coming  out 
as  well  as  going  in.  We  wanted  to  see  them  too.  We 
yearned  for  a  sign.  An  evil  and  adulterous  generation 
should  have  no  sign,  but  those  who  loved  him  needed  it 
and  should  have  it.  So  it  comes  to  pass  that  on  Easter 
Morning  we  see  the  footprints  of  the  blessed  Lord  com¬ 
ing  away  from  the  tomb.  And  then  we  know  for  the  first 
time  that  the  divine  seal  has  been  placed  upon  that  irre¬ 
sistible  conviction  within  us. 

Why  do  we  believe  these  outbound  footprints  of  our 
blessed  Lord  are  real,  and  not  an  illusion?  Undoubtedly 
in  the  tremendous  excitements  of  that  crisis  morning  the 
witnesses  prove  incoherent  and  at  points  mutually  incon¬ 
sistent.  This  is  no  more  than  we  should  expect.  It  is 
said  that  no  two  of  the  naval  captains  at  Santiago 
Harbor  gave  accounts  of  that  great  naval  battle  with  the 
Spanish  Fleet  which  could  be  reconciled,  yet  all  were 
truthful  men.  The  eye  witnesses  of  the  Resurrection  were 
a  jury  of  plain  men,  and  their  case  makes  its  appeal,  not 
primarily,  perhaps,  to  critical  scholars,  but  to  plain  men 
who  know  their  fellow  men,  who  know  life  and  a  bit  of 
history.  To  those  who  do  know  men  it  is  inconceivable 
that  these  stolid,  unimaginative,  discouraged  and  pessi¬ 
mistic  disciples  could  have  been  deceived.  To  those  who 
know  men  it  is  inconceivable  that  in  the  blunt,  rugged 
honesty  of  their  characters  they  could  have  deceived 


TRACKS  LEADING  BOTH  WAYS 


89 


others.  The  change  in  their  lives  was  instant,  revolu¬ 
tionary,  and  permanent,  utterly  unexplainable  except  upon 
the  basis  of  some  colossal  fact  like  the  Resurrection. 
Moreover,  the  whole  history  of  the  world  has  been  cut  in 
two  by  Easter  Morning.  It  was  one  world  before  that 
date,  and  another  world  after  it.  All  that  is  noble  and 
true  and  uplifting  and  helpful  for  two  thousand  years 
traces  back  to  Easter  Morning.  If  the  glory  of  that 
morning  were  but  an  illusion,  then  we  should  be  forced  to 
conclude  that  the  best  things  the  world  has  ever  known 
have  had  a  lie  for  their  foundation.  Against  such  an  out¬ 
come  to  our  thinking  every  true  heart  revolts.  Far  better 
that  reason  should  be  staggered  by  a  miracle  than  that  our 
moral  natures  should  be  shocked  by  such  a  terrible  para¬ 
dox. 

The  Resurrection,  which  showed  men  Christ’s  foot¬ 
prints  coming  out  of  the  tomb,  stands  today  as  a  fact 
witnessed  not  only  by  the  men  of  his  time,  but  by  His 
mighty  deeds  wrought  throughout  the  ages,  the  deeds  of  a 
Risen  Victor.  Certain  workers  in  the  Near  East  Relief 
Movement  have  told  us  of  a  Greek  priest  who  led  his 
people  in  flight  before  the  advance  of  the  terrible  Turk. 
He  tried  as  best  he  could  to  comfort  his  flock.  He  told 
them  of  the  Good  Shepherd  and  of  His  sympathy  and  lov¬ 
ing  care  for  His  people.  But  those  stricken  and  dejected 
and  ragged  men  and  women  refused  to  be  comforted. 
They  said,  “No,  Christ  is  dead.  There  is  no  Christ.” 
Then  by  and  by,  stumbling,  halting,  starving,  diseased, 
and  ready  to  die,  they  came  in  sight  of  a  Near  East  Relief 
Station.  Over  it  flew  the  American  Flag.  And  when  the 
priest  caught  sight  of  it  he  cried  joyfully,  “Look,  my  chil¬ 
dren  !  Look !  See,  it  is  true !  He  is  not  dead !  Christ  is 


90 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


risen !”  And  that  stricken  people,  with  sobs  and  embraces, 
cried,  “He  is  risen  indeed !” 

Here,  gentlemen  of  the  critical  schools,  is  your  ultimate 
proof.  Here  is  the  Risen  Christ  pointing  men  to  new  life 
and  new  hope  in  a  world  of  sin  and  wickedness  and  sor¬ 
row.  Here  is  the  Risen  Christ  directing  men  to  trace  His 
own  footsteps,  not  toward  the  tomb,  but  away  from  it. 
Follow  His  tracks.  There  are  blood  stains  as  they  lead  in. 
But  when  they  come  out  the  firm  tread  is  that  of  victory. 
Beautiful  feet  of  Him  who  first  preached  the  gospel  of 
peace  through  deliverance  from  sin  and  death !  Pas¬ 
sionately  we  bend  to  kiss  them.  For  they  have  shown  us 
the  tracks  leading  both  ways. 


VII 


THE  SONS  OF  MARY  AND  THE  SONS 

OF  MARTHA 

Text:  They  had  the  hands  of  a  man  under  their  wings. 

— Ezekiel  1 :8 

Now  Jesus  loved  Mary  and  her  sister. 

— John  11 :5 

Centuries  ago  a  great  poet  and  prophet  painted  a  sym¬ 
bolical  picture  of  ideal  life.  Its  beauty,  its  power,  and  its 
symmetry  were  portrayed  by  vast  and  mysterious  living 
creatures.  Among  the  many  details  which  round  out  the 
symbol,  none  is  more  impressive  than  this — the  living 
creatures  had  “the  hands  of  a  man  under  their  wings.” 

For  the  mysteries  that  enfold  us  can  find  their  true 
solution  only  in  the  proper  balance  between  hands  and 
wings.  Life  is  a  continual  series  of  adjustments  between 
the  material  and  the  spiritual,  between  human  possibility 
and  divine  aspiration,  between  the  limitations  of  the 
finite  around  us  and  the  call  of  the  infinite  within  us, 
between  the  hands  that  toil  and  the  wings  that  soar.  Our 
daily  task  is  the  weaving  of  practical  threads  in  an  ideal 
pattern,  the  doing  of  common  things  for  uncommon  ends. 

The  chariot  of  human  progress  moves  to  its  goal  on 
two  wheels — vision  and  action.  Obstruct  either  wheel 
and  there  is  deflection,  delay,  and  irreparable  loss.  Let 
them  move  together  in  complete  harmony,  and  the  whole 


9i 


92 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


being  advances  to  its  destiny,  the  divine  and  human  ele¬ 
ments  blended  “like  perfect  music  unto  noble  words.” 

But  how  shall  we  make  the  wheels  of  vision  and  action 
move  together?  The  difficulty  is  not  that  men  do  not 
know  enough,  but  that  they  do  not  keep  what  they  know 
in  proper  balance.  For  while  the  thoughtful  mind  per¬ 
ceives  that  all  truth  is  but  the  golden  mean  between  hostile 
extremes,  average  human  nature  finds  golden  means  irk¬ 
some  and  even  unendurable.  By  and  large,  humanity  has 
ever  been  instinctively  partisan,  has  ever  suffered  from  in¬ 
grained  radicalism.  In  religion,  politics,  art,  philosophy, 
and  even  in  those  sacred  temples  dedicate  to  the  modern 
gods  of  science,  advocates  of  dififering  views  seem  in¬ 
stinctively  to  practice  what  Whistler  called  the  “gentle  art 
of  making  enemies.”  As  in  thinking,  men  are  materialists 
or  idealists,  so  in  life  we  have  men  of  action  and  men  of 
vision,  men  of  the  hands  and  men  of  the  wings,  practical 
men  with  feet  on  the  ground  and  seers  and  saints  with  eyes 
on  the  stars. 

Surely  this  unfortunate  line  of  cleavage  has  cursed  the 
world  long  enough.  We  should  have  done  with  it  in  the 
twentieth  century,  and  we  could,  did  we  but  realize  how 
at  bottom  it  rests  on  mutual  misunderstanding.  When  a 
heathen  king  would  have  a  heathen  prophet  curse  the  camp 
of  God’s  people,  he  entreated  him  to  take  a  position  from 
which  he  could  get  only  a  partial  view  of  the  enemy,  and 
curse  them  from  thence.  Now,  as  then,  the  half-way 
view  is  parent  of  curses,  hatred,  and  invective. 

The  saint  sometimes  misunderstands  the  strong  man. 
He  thinks  him  heedless,  reckless,  careless  of  his  own  soul, 
thoughtless  about  the  real  meanings  of  life,  “sadly  con¬ 
tented  in  a  show  of  things,”  unheeding  the  solemn  beckon- 


SONS  OF  MARY  AND  SONS  OF  MARTHA  93 


ings  that  come  to  the  earnest  watcher  from  out  the 
shadows  of  eternity.  The  clamor  and  rush  of  the  marts 
and  streets  fall  with  harsh  and  painful  discord  on  the  ears 
of  the  mystic.  But  what  he  fails  to  catch  is  the  real 
romance  of  the  practical.  His  eyes  are  blinded  to  the  true 
love  and  loyalty  and  sacrifice,  yes,  even  the  glint  of  ten¬ 
derness  and  sentiment  underneath  the  rough  exterior  of 
the  man  in  shirt  sleeves  who  does  the  world’s  work. 

Per  contra,  the  practical  man  is  even  more  narrow  and 
bigoted  in  his  estimate  of  the  saintly  life.  He  assumes 
that  to  spend  one’s  life  in  the  service  of  religion  is  of 
necessity  to  be  set  down  as  weak,  bloodless,  effeminate, 
“a  drinker  of  tea  and  a  ringer  of  door  bells,”  a  conven¬ 
tional  requirement  at  weddings  and  funerals,  fitted  to 
mingle  with  women  and  children  but,  by  his  very  occupa¬ 
tion,  unfitted  for  fellowship  on  terms  of  equality  with 
those  who  are  “neither  children  nor  Gods,  but  men  in  a 
world  of  men.”  “Are  we  not  doing  the  world’s  work?” 
say  these  strong  men.  “Are  we  not  carrying  the  world’s 
burdens?  Where,  forsooth,  would  your  saint  be,  if  we 
did  not  plan  for  him,  and  build  for  him,  and  fend  for  him, 
and  protect  him  from  his  own  blundering  inefficiencies; 
and  appoint  ourselves  general  guardians-in-ordinary  for 
the  whole  helpless  race  of  dreaming,  praying,  unworldly 
mystics  ?” 

This  is  the  gospel  according  to  Mr.  Kipling: 

“The  Sons  of  Mary  seldom  bother,  for  they  have  inherited 
that  good  part; 

But  the  Sons  of  Martha  favour  their  Mother  of  the 
careful  soul  and  the  troubled  heart. 

And  because  she  lost  her  temper  once,  and  because  she 
was  rude  to  the  Lord  her  Guest, 


94 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


Her  Sons  must  wait  upon  Mary’s  Sons,  world  without 
end,  reprieve,  or  rest. 

It  is  their  care  in  all  the  ages  to  take  the  buffet  and 
cushion  the  shock. 

It  is  their  care  that  the  gear  engages;  it  is  their  care 
that  the  switches  lock. 

It  is  their  care  that  the  wheels  run  truly;  it  is  their  care 
to  embark  and  entrain, 

Tally,  transport,  and  deliver  duly  the  Sons  of  Mary  by 
land  and  main. 

They  say  to  mountains,  “Be  ye  removed.”  They  say  to 
the  lesser  floods  ‘Be  dry.’ 

Under  their  rods  are  the  rocks  reproved — they  are  not 
afraid  of  that  which  is  high. 

Then  do  the  hill-tops  shake  to  the  summit — then  is  the 
bed  of  the  deep  laid  bare, 

That  the  Sons  of  Mary  may  overcome  it,  pleasantly 
sleeping  and  unaware. 

They  do  not  preach  that  their  God  will  rouse  them  a 
little  before  the  nuts  work  loose. 

They  do  not  teach  that  His  Pity  allows  them  to  leave 
their  work  whenever  they  choose. 

As  in  the  thronged  and  the  lighted  ways,  so  in  the  dark 
and  the  desert  they  stand, 

Wary  and  watchful  all  their  days  that  their  brethren’s 
days  may  be  long  in  the  land. 

Raise  ye  the  stone  or  cleave  the  wood  to  make  a  path 
more  fair  or  flat; 

Lo,  it  is  black  already  with  blood  some  Son  of  Martha 
spilled  for  that ! 

Not  as  a  ladder  from  earth  to  Heaven,  not  as  a  witness 
to  any  creed, 

But  simple  service  simply  given  to  his  own  kind  in  their 
common  need. 


SONS  OF  MARY  AND  SONS  OF  MARTHA  95 


And  the  Sons  of  Mary  smile  and  are  blessed — they  know 
the  angels  are  on  their  side. 

Then  know  in  them  is  the  Grace  confessed.  And  for 
them  are  the  Mercies  multiplied. 

They  sit  at  the  Feet — they  hear  the  Word — they  see  how 
truly  the  Promise  runs; 

They  have  cast  their  burden  upon  the  Lord,  and — the 
Lord  He  lays  it  on  Martha’s  Sons!” 

Now  the  tragedy  of  it  is  that  these  two  types,  though 
they  are  own  first  cousins,  do  not  realize  their  mutual 
dependence.  Thus  the  Son  of  Mary  on  his  way  to  a 
religious  gathering,  or  perchance  to  the  mission  field,  is 
shocked  by  the  profanity  of  the  engineer  whom  he  passes 
on  the  depot  platform ;  and  in  his  berth  at  night  the 
soul  of  the  saint  lifts  itself  to  God  for  safety  and  pro¬ 
tection  from  the  dangers  of  the  journey.  Does  he  stop  to 
think  that  God  gave  that  engineer,  along  with  a  rough 
exterior,  an  eagle  eye,  a  lion  heart,  and  nerves  of  steel? 
Does  he  understand  that  his  prayer  is  answered  through 
the  Son  of  Martha  at  the  throttle,  and  through  hundreds 
of  his  comrades  along  the  way,  on  whose  sleepless  vigi¬ 
lance  the  safety  of  the  train  depends? 

But  on  the  other  hand  consider  the  engineer,  faring 
onward  sixty  miles  an  hour,  through  the  night  and  the 
storm,  depending  for  his  safety  on  a  thousand  circum¬ 
stances  which  not  even  the  keenest  vigilance  can  control, 
subject  to  dangers  which  no  human  ingenuity  can  fore¬ 
see  or  avert.  Does  he  suppose  for  one  moment  that  the 
prayer  from  the  berth,  laying  hold  on  unseen  guardian 
forces,  is  a  thing  to  be  despised  ?  In  fact  these  two  men, 
unknown  to  themselves,  are  simply  types  of  the  two-sided, 
all-inclusive  yet  ever  elusive  mystery  of  human  life.  The 
Calvinist  in  the  berth  emphasizes  divine  purpose;  the 


96 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


Arminian  at  the  throttle  sees  only  human  agency.  “Use¬ 
less  each  without  the  other.”  And  yet  Mary’s  Son  shrinks 
from  his  cousin  as  reckless  and  unspiritual,  while  Martha’s 
Son  views  his  saintly  relative  with  a  mild  tolerance  that 
sometimes  shades  towards  good-natured  contempt. 

I  am  profoundly  convinced  that  with  the  Christian- 
college-bred  man  rests  the  solution  of  this  age-long 
estrangement.  Only  the  man  of  liberal  education  is  broad 
enough  to  see  both  sides  of  the  problem.  Only  he  who  has 
kept  the  balance  between  the  material  and  the  spiritual  is 
equipped  for  solving  it  intelligently.  To  the  Christian- 
college-bred  man  we  instinctively  turn — to  the  type  of 
mind  trained  to  sympathy  with  both  extremes.  He  has 
learned  that  the  strong  man  is  all  the  stronger  for  being 
saintly  in  the  sane  and  healthy  sense.  He  has  learned, 
too,  that  the  saint  is  all  the  holier  for  being  strong;  that 
there  is  nothing  manly  in  sin  and  nothing  weak  in  re¬ 
ligion;  that  manhood  rooted  in  faith  is  the  power  that 
overcomes  the  world;  that  swaggering  toughness  is  not 
strength  but  weakness  ;  that  not  bravado  but  quietness 
makes  men  great;  that  he  who  rules  his  own  spirit  is 
greater  than  he  who  conquers  a  city.  To  him  must  we 
look  for  “good  men  who  are  good  for  something,”  for 
the  mind  that  can  translate  vision  into  service,  for  the 
heart  and  the  hand  that  can  give  the  sad  world  a  splendid 
dream  and  the  interpretation  thereof  in  terms  of  practical 
efficiency.  A  hard  task — but  not  impossible.  For  even 
now  you  may  sometimes  see  the  dreamer  and  the  doer 
working  side  by  side  in  perfect  amity.  Nay  more,  our 
really  great  men  embody  the  essential  elements  of  both 
types ;  for  there  was  One  of  old  who  loved  both  Mary  and 
her  sister  Martha,  and  that  August  Dreamer,  the  supreme 


SONS  OF  MARY  AND  SONS  OF  MARTHA  97 


character  of  all  time,  is  the  one  Man  who  has  left  behind 
Him,  “not  an  influence,  but  a  practical  activity.” 

Now  there  is  a  true  and  proper  sense  in  which  the  spirit 
of  the  Sons  of  Martha  must  infuse  our  service.  We  need 
its  virile  incentive.  The  manly  ring  of  its  call  to  action 
should  stir  us,  as  the  trumpet  “thro’  the  thick  night”  sum¬ 
mons  the  warrior  to  the  battle  line.  We  need  its  breadth, 
its  vigor,  its  healthy-mindedness,  its  insistence  upon  the 
practical  application  of  means  to  ends,  its  spirit  of  give 
and  take,  its  grim  determination  to  “play  out  the  game,” 
its  shutting  of  teeth  to  do  the  thing  accounted  impossible  or 
to  perish  in  the  effort,  its  shrewd  admixture  of  caution 
and  daring  that  has  made  the  blue-eyed  Anglo-Saxon 
master  of  half  the  globe.  The  day  has  gone  by  when 
piety  can  be  a  cloak  to  laziness,  when  spirituality  can  com¬ 
pensate  for  slack  and  shuffling  and  flabby  inefficiency. 
Hard-headed  men  care  little  for  our  creeds  and  less  for 
our  mystic  visions.  Its  insistent  questions  are:  “What 
have  you  done  ?”  and  “What  can  you  do  ?”  “What  is  your 
life  in  terms  of  practical  efficiency?” 

Botanists  tell  us  of  certain  kinds  of  vegetable  life  which 
are  really  robber-plants,  parasites,  which  seem  fair  and 
flourishing  above  the  surface,  but  in  reality,  underneath 
the  soil,  suck  their  sustenance  from  the  roots  of  other 
plants.  So  there  are  lives  that  can  be  accounted  little 
more  than  genial  social  parasites,  drawing  sustenance  from 
the  life  around  them  without  giving  anything  in  return. 
Now  there  is  one  supreme  sin  which  inevitably  lands  a 
life  in  the  parasite  class.  It  is  the  unpardonable  sin  in 
the  great  struggle  for  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  That  sin 
is  what  Mr.  Browning  calls  the  “unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt 
loin”;  the  sin  of  people  who  can  do  something  in  the 


98  THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 

world  that  is  worth  while,  and  who  do  not;  the  sin  of 
those  who,  having  a  belief,  never  try  to  clothe  that  belief 
in  terms  of  practical  efficiency ;  the  sin  of  having  a  creed 
and  failing  to  make  it  march.  Somebody  has  said  that 
“Genius  is  an  infinite  capacity  for  taking  pains.”  I  do 
not  know  of  a  more  foolish  definition.  That  is  just 
exactly  what  genius  is  not.  Genius  is  usually  manifest 
in  the  lives  of  people  who  do  not  have  a  capacity  for  tak¬ 
ing  pains.  Genius  is  a  flash  of  divine  fire  that  comes  un¬ 
bidden,  spontaneously  lighting  up  the  lives  of  a  few  men. 
It  is  the  unbought  gift  of  the  gods.  But  most  of  us  are  not 
geniuses.  And  it  is  fortunately  so,  because  the  world  is 
never  so  much  in  need  of  more  genius  as  it  is  in  desperate 
need  of  steady,  hard-working  plodders  who  know  how  to 
take  the  vision  of  some  great  seer  and  to  gear  it  up  to  the 
practical  demands  of  everyday,  routine  living. 

“Satan  trembles  when  he  sees  the  weakest  saint  upon 
his  knees.”  Yes,  but  he  despairs  when  the  saint  rises  from 
his  knees  and  draws  the  sword  to  answer  his  own  petitions. 
And  he  surrenders  before  the  grim  determination  which 
translates  the  vision  of  Jesus  into  a  code  of  practical  twen¬ 
tieth  century  efficiency.  For  the  Powers  of  Darkness  have 
always  the  attitude  expressed  in  Mr.  Kipling’s  lines: 

“I’d  not  give  way  for  an  Emperor, 

Pd  hold  my  road  for  a  King — 

To  the  Triple  Crown  I  would  not  bow  down — 

But  this  is  a  different  thing. 

/’ll  not  fight  with  the  powers  of  Air, 

Sentry,  pass  him  through ! 

Drawbridge  let  fall,  ’tis  the  Lord  of  us  all, 

The  Dreamer  whose  dreams  come  true !” 

I  have  thus  far  been  making  my  plea  for  the  spirit  of 
the  Sons  of  Martha.  I  have  tried  to  make  you  feel  how 


SONS  OF  MARY  AND  SONS  OF  MARTHA  99 


this  stern,  practical  age  is  calling  upon  you  and  me  for  the 
very  best  possible  equipment  of  brain  and  hand,  and  how 
it  impels  us  to  keep  our  feet  upon  the  ground,  to  meet 
this  world  as  we  find  it,  and  to  put  the  best  we  have  into 
our  work.  I  am  now  to  turn  your  attention  to  the  other 
side  of  the  picture.  We  need  to  be  reminded  that  there  is 
something  even  higher  than  efficiency.  In  a  survey  made 
a  few  years  ago  among  the  engineering  societies  \of 
America  an  investigation  was  made  as  to  the  qualities  of 
a  man  which  would  best  secure  his  advancement  in  his 
chosen  line.  And  when  the  replies  came  in  and  the  per¬ 
centages  were  figured  up  it  was  found  these  engineers  had 
decided  that  a  man’s  chances  for  promotion  depended 
about  nine  per  cent  upon  efficiency  and  forty-one  per  cent 
upon  personal  character.  Now  it  is  the  spirit  of  the  Sons 
of  Mary  which  is  the  secret  of  personal  character.  By 
that  I  mean  the  power  of  spiritual  vision  in  our  lives, 
the  vision  which  links  us  up  to  the  great  eternal  world,  to 
the  spiritual  realities  that  eye  hath  not  seen  nor  ear  heard, 
and  which  would  never  have  entered  into  the  heart  of  man 
had  it  not  been  for  God’s  speaking  to  the  human  soul. 
Unless  we  keep  the  upper  windows  of  the  soul  open  to  the 
sunlight  by  day  and  to  the  starlight  by  night  all  our 
boasted  efficiency  will  not  go  very  far. 

Why,  the  difficulty  with  many  business  men  is  not  the 
lack  of  routine  efficiency,  but  the  lack  of  spiritual  vision. 
They  are  not  big  enough  in  imagination  to  dream  great 
dreams.  They  are  not  large  enough  in  character  to  take 
the  shocks  of  business  reverse.  They  are  not  trained, 
by  broad,  deep  spiritual  thinking,  to  keep  their  balance 
when  the  unexpected  comes  and  things  go  wrong.  I 
talked  not  long  ago  with  one  of  the  most  successful  men  in 


100 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


the  business  world.  He  had  a  classical  education,  studied 
for  the  ministry,  and  then  because  of  ill-health  went  into  a 
most  prosaic  and  practical  form  of  business.  But  in  that 
practical  business  he  has  outstripped  his  competitors  and 
become  the  leading  man  in  his  line  in  America.  He  told 
me,  “The  secret  of  my  success  lies  in  the  fact  that  I  had 
a  classical  education.”  He  said,  “I  have  beaten  my  com¬ 
petitors  in  imagination  and  in  ability  to  meet  reverses 
through  spiritual  vision.”  Why,  there  never  has  been  a 
great  business  success  which  was  not  the  dream,  first  of 
all,  of  some  visionary  who  had  a  great  daring  leap  of 
imagination  and  then  set  to  work  to  make  the  thing  come 
true. 

No  matter  how  practical  a  life  you  may  intend  to  lead, 
unless  you  have  some  of  this  power  of  imagination  and 
spiritual  vision  you  will  become  a  mere  routine  plodder,  a 
one-sided  man  or  woman.  The  more  practical  your  life- 
work  is  to  be,  the  more  careful  you  ought  to  be  in  balanc¬ 
ing  the  daily  routine  with  that  which  will  lift  the  soul  out 
of  itself  and  keep  you  from  withering  up  into  a  narrow, 
machine-made  existence.  It  takes  vision  to  keep  you  out 
of  a  groove,  and  a  groove  is  only  another  way  of  spelling 
a  grave.  It’s  just  as  easy  to  lose  one’s  balance  through 
failure  in  vision  as  through  failure  in  practical  adaptation. 
We  have  a  curious  idea  that  only  visionary  people  go 
insane.  On  the  contrary,  the  insane  are  often  those  who 
have  been  driven  into  mental  instability  by  the  sheer 
monotony  of  life,  with  never  a  glimpse  at  the  stars.  I  am 
told  that  Pillsbury,  the  great  chess  player,  went  insane — 
because  he  took  a  mind  built  for  great,  beautiful,  eternal 
truths  and  fastened  it  down  for  days  and  months  and 
years  upon  the  squares  of  a  chess  board.  Dr.  Woods- 


SONS  OF  MARY  AND  SONS  OF  MARTHA  ioi 


Hutchinson,  the  noted  health  writer,  has  stated  that  a 
larger  percentage  of  farmers,  wives  go  insane  than  any  , 
other  class  of  people.  Certainly  anyone  who  has  ever 
lived  on  the  farm  will  not  believe  that  farmers’  wives  are 
crazed  by  any  undue  tendency  toward  spiritual  visions  and 
by  any  lack  of  steady,  everyday,  practical  routine.  I  have 
heard  of  a  lady  who  went  to  a  noted  oculist  for  advice 
regarding  her  eyes.  He  said  to  her,  “Madame,  the  trouble 
with  your  eyes  is  that  you  are  looking  too  much  at  objects 
near  at  hand.  I  want  you  each  day  to  go  out  upon  your 
lawn,  take  a  seat  there,  and  for  an  hour  to  gaze  steadily 
at  the  tops  of  those  distant  mountains,  a  hundred  miles 
away  on  the  horizon.  What  you  need  is  the  far  view  to 
restore  the  normal  function  of  your  eyes.”  And  what 
many  people  in  the  busy  routine  of  daily  life  need  is  the 
far  view,  to  lift  their  eyes  to  the  great  eternal  mountains 
of  truth  and  beauty  which  will  endure  when  all  the  results 
of  our  practical  activities  have  crumbled  to  dust. 

Every  young  man  and  woman  ought  to  go  out  into 
life  fully  persuaded  that  this  unseen  spiritual  world  is  not 
illusion,  but  reality.  I  remember  how  Dorothy  Canfield 
Fisher  told  of  an  experience  of  hers  in  the  city  of  Paris  at 
the  bitterest  moment  of  the  World  War.  |  America  then 
was  believing  her  ideals  of  humanity  and  world-wide 
brotherhood,  and  was  putting  every  inch  of  her  resources 
into  the  struggle  for  them.  ^  And  Mrs.  Fisher  said  she 
sat  beside  a  woman  in  a  Paris  streetcar,  a  woman  whose 
mourning  betrayed  that  she  too  had  given  her  all  in  the 
war.  And  the  woman  said,  “Every  time  I  see  the  Amer¬ 
ican  Flag  it  seems  to  say  to  me,  ‘No,  the  Germans  are 
wrong ;  ideals  are  the  realest  things  there  are.’  ”  The 
saddest  day  for  France  and  the  saddest  day  for  America 


102 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


is  the  day  when  either  of  us  forgets  that,  the  day  when 
we  come  down  to  sordid,  selfish  notions  of  so-called  prac¬ 
tical  self-seeking,  which  bid  fair  to  wreck  the  world. 

Ideals  are  the  realest  things  in  the  world.  If  you  can¬ 
not  believe  that,  it  is  not  the  fault  of  the  ideals,  but  the 
fault  of  yourself.  I  remember  when  I  was  a  college 
senior,  how  a  group  of  upper-classmen  went  out  one  night 
to  study  the  moon  through  the  college  telescope.  We  ad¬ 
justed  it  to  our  satisfaction,  but  when  we  looked  there 
was  no  moon  to  be  seen.  By  and  by  the  President  of  the 
institution  came  along  and  volunteered  to  assist  us  in  find¬ 
ing  the  moon.  We  trained  the  telescope  upon  her  in  vain. 
At  last  a  freshman  came  strolling  along  that  campus,  took 
one  look  at  the  telescope,  and  said,  “If  you  fools  would 
take  the  cap  off  that  lens  maybe  you  might  see  the  moon.” 

The  difficulty  with  some  men  and  women  who  refuse  to 
believe  in  the  ideal  side  of  life  is  that  they  have  the  cap  on 
the  lens — the  cap  of  narrow,  sordid  living,  the  cap  of 
ignorant  selfishness  and  gross  impurity,  the  dull  routine 
of  the  coarse  and  the  Christless. 

There  never  was  a  time  which  called  so  loudly  for  men 
and  women  of  courage  and  vision.  The  finest  fruits  of 
civilization  are  in  danger  today  of  utter  destruction.  And 
the  tragedy  is  that  this  danger  is  wholly  unnecessary.  It 
is  not  any  natural  and  inevitable  danger  that  is  threatening 
to  sweep  away  civilization  itself  from  the  face  of  the 
earth.  But  it  is  wholly  a  condition  which  has  arisen 
through  ignorance,  through  narrowness,  through  selfish¬ 
ness,  through  men’s  inability  or  unwillingness  to  live  and 
act  as  though  God  were  in  his  heaven.  I  have  been  read¬ 
ing  recently  those  wonderful  and  beautiful  letters  of  the 
late  Franklin  K.  Lane,  Secretary  of  the  Interior  through 


SONS  OF  MARY  AND  SONS  OF  MARTHA  103 

most  of  President  Wilson’s  administration.  Just  before 
the  World  War  began,  Mr.  Lane,  writing  to  a  friend,  said, 
“Mind  you,  I  have  no  religion,  I  attend  no  church,  and 
I  deal  all  day  long  with  hard  questions  of  economics,  so 
that  I  am  nothing  of  a  preacher.”  But  this  was  his 
diagnosis  of  the  need  of  our  time.  He  said,  “Agnosticism 
led  to  sensualism,  and  sensualism  had  its  foundation  in 
hopelessness.  We  are  materialists  because  we  have  no 
faith.  This  thing,  however,  is  being  changed.  We  are 
coming  to  recognize  spiritual  forces,  and  I  put  my  hope 
for  the  future,  not  in  a  reduction  of  the  high  cost  of  living, 
nor  in  any  scheme  of  government,  but  in  the  recognition 
by  the  people  that  after  all  there  is  a  God  in  the  world.” 

If  our  vision  perish,  the  driving  power  that  moves  the 
world  is  at  a  standstill.  I  plead  then  for  the  spirit  of  the 
Sons  of  Mary  as  the  dominating  principle  of  our  lives — 
the  Sons  of  a  Mother  who  chose  the  good  part  that  shall 
not  be  taken  away  from  her.  We  need  the  hands  and  we 
must  needs  be  trained  to  use  them — but  always  they  must 
be  under  the  wings.  Always  the  splendor  of  God  must 
illuminate  and  dominate.  Forward,  Knights  of  the 
Supreme  Vision! 

“Trumpeter,  sound  for  the  splendor  of  God! 

•  •  •  • 

Sound  for  the  heights  that  our  fathers  trod; 

When  truth  was  truth  and  love  was  love 
With  a  hell  beneath,  but  a  heaven  above, 

Trumpeter,  rally  us,  rally  us,  rally  us, 

On  to  the  City  of  God.” 


VIII 


PAINTING  THE  WHITE  POST 

Many  years  ago  I  sat  one  evening  discussing  life  with 
a  certain  noted  political  leader.  We  were  in  his  library 
lined  with  hundreds  of  books  through  which  this  self- 
educated  man  had  made  himself  acquainted  with  more 
history,  ancient  and  modern,  than  the  average  college 
graduate  knows  anything  about.  And  I  remember  how  he 
suddenly  turned  to  me  and  said  abruptly,  “Do  you  know 
what  has  made  the  Jew  the  most  virile  and  persistent  race 
in  human  history  ?”  One  was  reminded  of  Renan’s  re¬ 
mark  that  God  selected  the  Jew  to  be  His  chosen  people 
because  of  his  “toughness,”  that  is  to  say,  because,  of  all 
the  races  of  antiquity,  he  showed  the  greatest  persistence. 
But  I  said  to  him,  “What  is  your  idea  about  it?”  And  he 
replied,  “Forty  years  of  education  in  the  University  of 
Hard  Knocks  in  the  wilderness.” 

That  was  indeed  a  colossal  experiment  in  pedagogy. 
The  Jew  had  an  intensive  education  in  God’s  great  univer¬ 
sity,  with  courses  in  theology,  ethics,  sanitation,  archi¬ 
tecture,  law,  military  science,  sociology  and  political 
economy.  But  his  persistence,  the  virility  and  toughness 
of  fiber  which  makes  him  today  the  outstanding  miracle 
of  history,  calls  for  an  additional  explanation.  And  this 
explanation  can  be  put  in  a  single  sentence.  No  nation 
in  all  history  so  completely  mastered  the  knack  of  handing 
down  to  her  children  the  permanent  results  of  her  past 

104 


PAINTING  THE  WHITE  POST  105 

achievements.  Other  nations  knew  how  to  attain,  but 
the  Jew  knew  how  to  retain.  Other  ancient  peoples  knew 
how  to  acquire,  but  not  how  to  conserve.  This  nation, 
under  divine  guidance,  was  always  planning  so  that  its 
past  results  could  be  made  permanent  and  passed  down  to 
the  coming  generations.  Moses,  the  great  leader,  had  a 
statesman’s  eye  for  the  future.  He  watched  “the  bairns 
coming  on.”  Consider  the  great  passover  ceremonial  it¬ 
self,  that  central  service  of  the  Jewish  people  whose  mod¬ 
ern  counterpart  we  observe  in  the  communion  feast.  It 
was  of  course  a  commemorative  rite,  a  reminder  to  each 
generation  of  God’s  blood-bought  mercy  to  their  fathers. 
But  also  the  passover  was  an  educational  service  care¬ 
fully  planned  to  catch  up  the  meanings  of  a  bygone  day 
and  bind  them  down  to  the  coming  generations,  linking 
past,  present,  and  future  in  one  great  commemorative 
whole.  It  was  avowedly  pedagogical  in  purpose,  “That 
thou  mayest  tell  in  the  ears  of  thy  son,  and  of  thy  son’s 
son,  what  things  I  have  wrought  upon  Egypt,  and  my 
signs  which  I  have  done  among  them ;  that  ye  may  know 
that  I  am  Jehovah.”  “And  it  shall  come  to  pass,  when 
your  children  shall  say  unto  you,  What  mean  ye  by  this 
service?  that  ye  shall  say,  It  is  the  sacrifice  of  Jehovah’s 
passover,  who  passed  over  the  houses  of  the  children  of 
Israel  in  Egypt,  when  he  smote  the  Egyptians.”  “When 
thy  son  asketh  thee  in  time  to  come,  saying,  What  mean 
the  testimonies,  and  the  statutes,  and  the  ordinances, 
which  Jehovah  our  God  hath  commanded  you?  then  ye 
shall  say  unto  your  son,  We  were  Pharaoh’s  bondmen  in 
Egypt,  and  Jehovah  brought  us  out  of  Egypt  with  a 
mighty  hand.”  This  is  the  note  that  rings  again  and  again 
and  again  throughout  the  whole  Pentateuch.  Here  were 


io6  THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 

divinely  guided  statesmen  who  knew  that  the  greatness  of 
a  nation  would  depend  upon  their  ability  to  gather  up  the 
best  achievements  of  the  past  and  to  hand  them  down  un¬ 
spoiled  and  unpolluted  to  those  who  should  come  after. 

Dr.  S.  Parkes  Cadman,  in  his  admirable  book  “Ambas¬ 
sadors  of  God,”  has  said,  “The  Hebrew  Scriptures  are 
the  only  specimens  of  historical  literature  the  ancient 
East  has  bequeathed  to  civilization . . .  despite  the  innumer¬ 
able  Egyptian,  Assyrian,  and  Babylonian  inscriptions 
and  other  writings  which  have  been  deciphered  in 
recent  years,  there  is  no  people  contemporaneous  with 
the  Israelites  whose  records  rise  to  the  dignity  of  history/' 
Why  was  this  ?  Why  were  they  the  one  outstanding  people 
to  bequeath  to  the  world  a  real  history  ?  Because  they  were 
the  one  people  who  were  thinking  in  terms  of  the  coming 
generations.  They  wanted  to  get  things  down  in  black 
and  white.  They  even  made  a  fetish  of  tradition.  No  jot 
or  tittle  of  the  written  law  or  the  oral  tradition  must  be 
altered.  And  if  they  swung  too  far  in  the  direction  of 
slavish  traditionalism  or  of  blind  adherence  to  the  past, 
it  was  the  defect  of  their  quality.  The  quality  itself  made 
them  the  most  persistent  people  in  the  world. 

Most  modern  nations  are  obsessed  with  the  idea  of  im¬ 
proving  on  the  past.  They  work  very  hard  at  that.  They 
have  forgotten  how  hard  one  must  work  to  retain  the  best 
in  the  past.  When  the  thought  of  a  people  is  wholly 
centered  on  achievement  rather  than  upon  conservation, 
even  the  days  of  its  achievement  itself  are  numbered. 
When  we  study  only  how  we  can  attain,  and  quite  forget 
how  we  may  retain,  we  are  heading  toward  the  rocks. 
Little  Alice  in  Lewis  Carroll's  story  was  greatly  distressed 
because  in  a  race  you  had  to  run  and  run  as  fast  as  you 


PAINTING  THE  WHITE  POST 


107 


could  in  order  to  stay  where  you  were.  I  have  heard  of 
a  certain  yacht  race  many  years  ago  in  which,  owing  to 
adverse  tides  and  currents,  all  the  ships  were  drifting 
backward.  One  canny  skipper  was  victorious  because  he 
let  down  his  anchor  and  stood  fast.  This  is  no  plea  for 
blind  conservatism,  for  slavish  adherence  to  the  past.  But 
we  must  remind  ourselves  that  in  any  normal  evolution, 
persistence  has  its  place  along  with  change,  as  a  factor  in 
progress.  And  we  must  make  serious  study  not  only  con¬ 
cerning  desirable  changes  which  may  better  our  condition, 
but  also  concerning  an  equally  desirable  conservation 
which  holds  fast  that  which  we  have,  that  no  man  take  our 
crown.  Woodrow  Wilson  a  few  years  ago  said  that  if 
you  had  a  white  post  you  must  keep  doing  something  to 
it  each  year  if  you  would  keep  it  as  it  was.  You  had  to 
work  at  it  to  prevent  changes.  You  must  put  time  and 
toil  and  money  into  a  regular  painting  of  that  post,  or  it 
would  no  longer  be  a  white  post.  Permanence  involves 
effort  as  does  improvement. 

Now  world  history  is  full  of  national  wrecks  which 
came  because  people  left  off  painting  the  white  post.  The 
fine  old  Egyptian  culture,  what  became  of  it?  Finer  in  its 
way  and  in  its  day  than  the  Hebrew,  it  faded  out  because 
no  due  attention  was  given  to  the  handing  down  of  its  best 
achievements  so  that  the  generations  who  came  after 
should  not  lose  them.  The  world-conquering  Macedonian 
civilization,  with  its  art,  its  philosophy,  its  ethics,  and  its 
humanities,  is  gone  like  a  dream  in  the  night.  Lovely 
Greece  that  once  was,  stands  today  the  abjectest  figure  in 
Europe,  none  so  poor  to  do  her  reverence. 

“The  Niobe  of  nations!  there  she  stands, 

Childless  and  crownless,  in  her  voiceless  woe; 


io8  THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 

An  empty  urn  within  her  withered  hands, 

Whose  holy  dust  was  scattered  long  ago.” 

Splendid  her  achievement,  but  she  had  no  power  to  make 
it  permanent.  She  never  mastered  the  secret  of  persist¬ 
ence.  She  forgot  to  keep  painting  the  white  post.  And 
her  story  is  but  the  sad  epitome  of  decadence  by  which 
you  may  sum  up  a  score  of  civilizations. 

Is  it  yet  certain  that  America  has  learned  how  to  keep 
painting  the  white  post?  We  are  bent  upon  achievement. 
Have  we  equally  mastered  the  secret  of  retaining  the  best 
fruitage  of  past  achievement?  Is  our  future  progress  all 
to  be  described  in  terms  of  change,  or  partially  at  least  in 
terms  of  persistence?  If  so,  what  must  we  retain  and  how 
retain  it? 

The  answer  to  this  question  will  raise  another  one.  If 
you  ask  what  must  we  retain,  then  we  must  face  the 
query,  by  what  did  we  attain?  What  is  it,  after  all,  that 
has  given  to  us  Americans  our  proud  eminence  as  the  heirs 
of  all  the  ages  in  the  foremost  files  of  time?  What  pro¬ 
duced  our  civilization?  Natural  advantages?  Certainly 
not  all,  and  perhaps  not  at  all.  Is  it  simply  the  result  of 
evolution?  They  have  not  gone  far  into  that  subject  who 
retain  the  naive  idea  that  evolution  is  a  force  accomplish¬ 
ing  anything.  Evolution  is  only  the  study  of  the  method 
or  process  by  which  an  unknown  force  is  working  toward 
a  given  end.  It  is  sheer  nonsense  to  think  of  evolution, 
standing  by  itself,  as  the  final  explanation  of  anything.  If 
you  see  great  movements  of  civilization  working  out  to¬ 
ward  a  definite  end,  it  is  because  back  of  them  there  is  an 
intelligent  and  adequate  force  which  has  seen  that  end 
from  the  beginning  and  is  working  toward  it  by  means 
adequate  to  its  accomplishment.  And  history  will  bear  me 


PAINTING  THE  WHITE  POST  109 

witness  that  there  has  been  only  one  force  which  has  seen 
the  end  from  the  beginning  and  which  has  worked 
adequately  toward  that  end. 

That  force  is  the  resurrection  life  of  Christ  moving 
upon  the  hearts  of  men.  It  was  when  Columba  and 
Patricius  and  Gaulus  and  Paulinus  and  Augustine  came 
first  to  your  fathers  and  mine  and  told  them  of  the  Risen 
Christ,  that  the  whole  process  began. 

It  was  when  these  heralds  of  the  evangel  said,  “If  then 
ye  were  raised  together  with  Christ,  seek  the  things  that 
are  above,  where  Christ  is,  seated  on  the  right  hand  of 
God” ;  it  was  then  that  our  degraded  heathen  ancestors 
began  to  lift  their  faces  toward  the  sky  and  lift  their  feet 
out  of  the  mud.  It  was  the  same  colossal  impetus  which 
sent  them  across  the  seas,  by  and  by,  to  find  a  country 
where  the  life  and  liberty  of  Christ  could  have  its  way 
unhampered  by  old-world  paganisms.  When  all  is  said 
and  done,  the  best  blood  of  America  has  flowed  through 
the  veins  of  men  who  came  here  seeking  freedom  to  wor¬ 
ship  God,  and  planting  on  this  new  continent  a  common¬ 
wealth  of  the  spirit  wherein  new  meanings  should  be  read 
into  the  great  tri-color  words,  Liberty,  Fraternity,  and 
Equality.  Many  years  ago  a  little  girl  came  to  a  certain 
minister  and  said,  “My  teacher  told  us  the  other  day  that 
the  Koran  was  just  as  good  a  book  as  the  Bible ;  and  I  did 
not  know  what  to  say,  for  I  had  never  read  the  Koran.” 
And  the  clergyman  told  that  eleven-year-old  child  to  ask 
her  teacher  whether  she  would  prefer  to  live  in  Turkey  or 
in  America.  “By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them.”  The 
Koran  has  never  yet  produced  a  nation  fit  for  self-govern¬ 
ment  or  able  to  conserve  life,  property,  and  moral  decency. 
All  the  civilization  in  the  world  worthy  of  the  name  goes 


IIO  THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 

back  to  the  Christ  of  the  Bible.  By  this  sign  we  have  con¬ 
quered. 

What  are  our  points  of  danger?  From  what  angle  does 
the  menace  threaten  ? 

We  are  facing,  for  one  thing,  a  quite  concrete  and 
definite  attack  on  Christ’s  principle  of  liberty  under  law. 
Jesus  taught  that  freedom  is  never  anarchy.  It  is  rather 
the  freedom  of  the  engine — not  off  the  track,  but  on  the 
track.  Grooved  to  the  rails,  the  engine  is  free.  Leaping 
from  the  restraining  law  of  the  roadbed,  the  engine  lands 
in  ignominious  slavery  on  the  junk-heap.  Yet  in  many 
directions  we  are  confronted  with  a  sinister  propaganda 
which  would  throw  off  every  restraint  in  sheer  wild 
individualism.  Concretely,  this  danger  threatens  from 
those  who  would,  in  the  name  of  “personal  liberty,”  re¬ 
forge  upon  the  limbs  of  America  the  fetters  of  the  Amer¬ 
ican  saloon.  We  are  confronted  by  the  sinister  hypocrisy 
of  men  who  for  years  fought  a  referendum  on  the  liquor 
business,  and  who  now  complain  that  an  amendment 
adopted  by  forty-six  states  out  of  forty-eight  is  “minority 
legislation”  upon  which  the  people  have  never  passed  an 
opinion.  Having  piled  their  filthy  millions  by  the  enslave¬ 
ment  of  men,  the  broken  hearts  of  women,  and  the  bar 
sinister  on  the  cradles  of  newborn  babies,  these  unctuous 
Pecksniffs  now  deblaterate  of  “personal  liberty” !  One  is 
reminded  of  Mr.  Carlyle’s  stinging  words,  “No  man  op¬ 
presses  thee,  O  free  and  independent  Franchiser:  but 
does  not  this  stupid  Porter-pot  oppress  thee?  No  Son  of 
Adam  can  bid  thee  come  or  go ;  but  this  absurd  Pot  of 
Pleavy-wet,  this  can  and  does !  Thou  art  the  thrall  not 
of  Cedric  the  Saxon,  but  of  thine  own  brutal  appetites  and 
of  this  soured  dish  of  liquor.  And  thou  pratest  of  thy 
‘liberty’?  Thou  entire  blockhead!” 


PAINTING  THE  WHITE  POST 


hi 


Older  men  will  remember  that  during  the  Civil  War 
Mr.  Punch  was  Southern  in  his  sympathies.  There  were 
many  pages  of  bitter  anti-Americanism  which  most  of  us 
could  wish  had  never  been  written,  and  which  doubtless 
the  editors  themselves  came  to  wish  had  never  been  writ¬ 
ten.  Through  it  all  runs  the  bitter  undercurrent  of  hatred 
to  America  and  of  sympathy  with  the  Southern  cause,  or 
with  any  cause  that  would  break  up  the  Federal  Union. 
But  scanning  recently  the  old  Civil  War  issues  I  found 
one  page  in  which  Mr.  Punch  noted  how,  in  South  Caro¬ 
lina,  plantation  bells  had  been  melted  down  into  Con¬ 
federate  war  cannon.  And  he  shrewdly  observed  that  in 
his  judgment  the  bells  which  had  summoned  the  slaves  to 
their  labor  on  the  plantations  could  never  be  molded  into 
effective  cannon  to  roar  forth  the  chorus  of  human  free¬ 
dom.  You  can  never  win  the  fight  for  liberty  with  the 
weapons  forged  from  the  tools  of  the  slave  driver.  And 
you  can  never  thunder  the  chorus  of  human  rights  with 
cannon  forged  out  of  those  bells  which  have  been  ringing 
yearly  the  death  knell  of  a  hundred  thousand  drunkards ! 
The  ratchet  wheel  of  God  Almighty  has  clicked  on  that 
question,  and  there  must  be  no  reversing  of  the  machinery. 
The  American  Saloon  has  gone  to  the  guillotine  of  public 
opinion,  hearing  that  bitter  cry  which  rang  in  the  ears  of 
the  dying  Robespierre,  “Go  down  to  hell  with  the  curses 
of  all  wives  and  mothers !” 

The  second  great  menace  which  threatens  our  retention 
of  Christian  civilization  is  the  undue  exaltation,  yes,  the 
very  tyranny,  of  the  cold,  impersonal,  human  intellect.  It 
is  the  greatest  menace  today  in  the  field  of  education. 
“The  freezing  reason’s  colder  part,”  that  seeks  to  banish 
the  heart,  stifle  the  emotions,  and  mock  at  the  fine,  noble, 


1 12 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 
* 

beautiful  things  in  life  which  cannot  be  tested  in  the 
crucible  of  rigorous  intellectual  processes,  may  produce 
mighty  specialists  but  never  mighty  souls. 

Do  we  dare  to  make  education  merely  a  matter  of  in¬ 
tellectual  processes?  Can  we  safely  neglect  that  indefin¬ 
able  somewhat  which  eludes  comparison,  defies  analysis, 
and  laughs  at  logic,  yet  which  makes  poets  and  seers  and 
preachers  and  keeps  the  soul  of  the  race  alive?  Does  not 
our  progress  depend  on  the  rounded,  balanced,  warm  per¬ 
sonalities  which  can  reach  beyond  the  demonstrated, 
harness  the  unprecedented,  and  realize  the  impossible? 
It  is  the  soul  of  Beethoven  that  we  seek,  not  the  technical 
analysis  of. the  mechanical  process  by  which  he  composed 
his  matchless  music.  We  live  by  the  message  of  the 
flowers,  not  the  number  of  their  petals  and  stamens — by 
the  majesty  of  the  sunrise  rather  than  the  mathematics  of 
ethereal  vibrations — by  the  heart  glow  of  the  divine,  not 
by  cold  abstractions  of  the  philosophers  or  even  of  the 
theologians. 

Mr.  Lorenzo  Chance,  a  Treasury  official,  relates  how 
in  October  1920,  he  was  dining  at  St.  George’s  Hotel  in 
New  York  with  the  late  Colonel  Henry  Watterson.  The 
League  of  Nations  was  to  meet  for  the  first  time  on  the 
next  day.  Said  Mr.  Chance,  “What  a  stage  is  set  for  a 
great  speech!”  Said  Watterson,  “God’s  truth,  yes.” 
“But,”  said  Mr.  Chance,  “who  is  fit  to  make  it?  Who  is 
big  enough  for  such  a  stage  and  setting  ?”  The  old  fighter 
sat  in  silence  for  a  little,  and  then  his  eyes  filled  with  tears, 
and  this  Confederate  veteran  said,  “Chance,  if  all  the 
world’s  greatest  orators  of  the  last  three  centuries  were 
gathered  together,  there  would  be  but  one  who  should  be 
chosen.  I  mean  that  stylist  in  English  without  a  peer,  that 


PAINTING  THE  WHITE  POST  113 

great  hearted  man  who  delivered  the  Gettysburg  Address 
— my  Abraham.”  Yes,  the  world  is  gripped  and  held  and 
moved  and  swayed  by  great  hearts  like  Lincoln’s.  And 
our  care  must  be  lest  with  increasing  facilities  for  in¬ 
tellectual  development  we  should  forget  that  through  all 
the  ages  to  come  the  “stars  must  rule  and  the  heart 
command.” 

“The  night  has  a  thousand  eyes 
And  the  day  but  one; 

Yet  the  light  of  the  bright  world  dies 
With  the  dying  sun. 

The  mind  has  a  thousand  eyes, 

And  the  heart  but  one ; 

Yet  the  light  of  a  whole  life  dies 
When  love  is  done” 

The  third  great  menace  lies  in  a  relaxed  sense  of  per¬ 
sonal  responsibility.  Jesus  taught  us  to  look  first  to  our 
responsibilities  and  then  to  our  rights.  The  modern  air 
is  full  of  voices  clamorous  of  rights,  yet  utterly  silent 
regarding  responsibilities.  A  few  years  ago  Mr.  Chief 
Justice  Taft  declared  the  trouble  with  America  to  be  in 
the  fact  that  we  had  too  many  people  who  did  not  care 
what  happened,  so  long  as  it  did  not  happen  to  them.  This 
has  been  true  of  us  as  individuals.  It  has  been  true,  since 
the  war,  of  all  the  nations.  It  is  true,  I  fear,  today,  of 
our  own  Government.  A  few  years  ago  we  were  all  in 
a  fine  glow  of  brotherhood  and  idealism.  The  passion  of 
men  was  to  sacrifice  for  others.  In  the  bitter  hour  of  de¬ 
feat  at  Waterloo  one  of  Napoleon’s  marshals  cried  to  an¬ 
other,  “Aren’t  you  going  to  get  yourself  killed?”  That 
cry  was  echoed  from  the  hearts  of  our  lads  at  the  front. 
“Aren’t  you  going  to  get  yourself  killed  for  the  sake  of 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


114 

liberty  and  humanity,  of  freedom  and  democracy,  for  the 
sake  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  ?” 

Do  we  hear  that  voice  today?  If  so,  it  is  a  still  small 
voice,  practically  drowned  out  by  the  cry  of  men  who 
pride  themselves  on  keeping  their  feet  on  the  ground,  and 
whose  one  question  is,  “What  is  there  in  it  for  us  ?”  The 
easy  descent  into  the  abyss  of  narrow  nationalistic  selfish¬ 
ness  has  not  been  confined  to  any  one  people.  It  has 
characterized  every  one  of  the  allied  nations.  Nor  can 
we  escape  our  share  of  the  indictment.  For  a  single  in¬ 
stance,  Civilization  said  to  us,  “Will  you  take  a  mandate 
to  do  police  duty  in  helpless,  distracted  Armenia?”  We 
replied,  “No,  we  are  too  busy  looking  after  our  own  af¬ 
fairs.  America  first.”  What  was  the  result?  We  left 
the  police  duty  to”  England.  We  refused  to  underwrite 
any  guarantee  to  our  other  ally,  France,  to  protect  her 
against  the  German  menace  of  the  future.  France  in 
self-protection  must  turn  to  her  Mohammedan  colonies  in 
Africa.  From  them  she  must  draw  a  large  proportion  of 
her  soldiers  for  the  future.  In  order  to  make  those  sol¬ 
diers  loyal  France  must  deal  gently  with  the  Moham¬ 
medan.  As  a  consequence  we  find  our  late  enemy  the 
Turk  using  French  guns  and  French  ammunition  to  drive 
back  our  late  ally  the  Greek,  and  when  England  cries  to 
us,  “For  God’s  sake  help  us  clean  up  this  mess,”  we  reply, 
“Our  only  interest  in  the  Near  East  is  to  take  care  of  our 
own  interests.” 

Please  understand  me.  This  is  not  a  partisan  matter. 
Everybody  knows  there  are  two  groups  in  each  of  the 
leading  political  parties, — one  group  striving  toward 
idealism  and  the  acceptance  of  world  responsibility,  the 
other  group  striving  toward  narrow,  selfish  nationalism. 


PAINTING  THE  WHITE  POST  115 

The  problem  can  never  be  solved  by  the  victory  of  either 
party.  It  must  be  solved  along  non-partisan,  bi-partisan 
lines  as  we  have  grappled  with  the  temperance  question. 
It  can  be  solved,  not  as  men  leave  their  parties,  but  as  they 
lift  their  parties.  The  leaders  of  political  parties  are  just 
as  idealistic  as  we  make  them.  Their  first,  foremost, 
primary,  fundamental  and  unescapable  duty  is  to  win 
elections.  We  shall  bring  our  great  parties  to  the  accept¬ 
ance  of  Christian  responsibility  for  the  world  only  as  we 
create  a  keen  public  conscience  with  which  it  will  be  abso¬ 
lutely  necessary  to  reckon  in  the  winning  of  elections. 

Now  this  is  the  task  of  Christian  Education.  What  is 
Christian  Education?  Put  briefly,  it  is  civilization  per¬ 
petuating  itself.  It  is  the  process  of  handing  down  the  best 
things  of  yesterday  to  those  who  come  after.  It  is  placing 
the  results  of  human  experience  at  the  disposal  of  the  next 
generation.  It  is  not  blind  traditionalism.  It  is  not  un¬ 
willingness  to  accept  new  light.  It  is  not  what  George 
Eliot  spoke  about  when  she  likened  Christian  traditional¬ 
ism  to  the  tribe  of  South  African  savages  who  bind  back 
the  brows  of  their  little  babies,  and  develop  a  race  of  men 
and  women  with  slanting  foreheads  who,  as  she  said, 
catch  the  vision  of  the  stars  at  the  expense  of  their  brains. 
It  is  not  that,  but  it  does  mean  putting  a  solid  basis  of  past 
experience  as  the  foundation  and  starting  point  for  new 
progress.  Otherwise  each  generation  goes  the  same  use¬ 
less  circle,  because  each  generation  must  start  just  where 
the  previous  one  started.  Civilization  ought  to  be  a  relay 
race,  where  one  generation  carries  the  torch  and  puts  it  in 
the  hand  of  the  next.  If  we  are  to  meet  the  deadly  menace 
of  the  future,  we  must  hand  down  the  torch  to  our  chil¬ 
dren  and  our  children’s  children,  and  we  must  begin  in  the 


n6  THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 

home.  The  college  is  quite  willing  to  accept  a  full  meas¬ 
ure  of  reproach  for  some  college  graduates.  We  bow  our 
backs  to  the  smiters  in  all  humility,  recognizing  that  a 
considerable  percentage  of  those  who  hold  diplomas  might 
be  described  as  Henry  Adams  pictured  himself  when  he 
held  a  Harvard  diploma  in  his  hand.  Looking  back  on 
the  scene  he  said,  “He  had  as  yet  no  education  at  all. 
He  knew  not  even  where  or  how  to  begin.”  But  we 
cannot  accept  the  whole  of  it.  All  the  Church  can  do  in 
its  schools  presupposes  and  builds  on  what  it  has  already 
done  in  the  home.  Send  a  boy  or  girl  to  college  with  a 
wrong  or  a  w^eak  home  environment,  and  you  will  get  out 
about  what  you  put  in.  An  old  ministerial  friend  of  mine 
described  the  disappointment  of  a  farmer  who  saw  his  son 
on  Commencement  Day,  a  very  weak,  anemic,  and  un¬ 
worthy  specimen,  and  who  thought  sadly  of  the  money  it 
had  cost  him  to  educate  the  boy.  And  the  old  farmer  cried 
in  the  words  of  Aaron,  “I  put  in  gold  and  there  came  out 
this  calf !”  Civilization  must  first  perpetuate  herself  in 
the  Christian  home,  and  the  Church  must  care  for  that 
problem  through  the  great  educational  agencies  which 
reach  down  into  the  home  and  place  a  kindly  hand  upon 
the  boys  and  girls  before  they  have  left  “that  best  acad¬ 
eme,  a  mother’s  knee.” 

Moreover,  it  must  be  recognized  that  the  Church  can 
train  only  a  small  percentage  in  her  own  schools.  She 
must  reach  out  and  touch  the  lives  of  our  great  univer¬ 
sities,  bringing  there  the  warm  personal  atmosphere  which 
by  the  very  nature  and  size  of  a  state  institution  cannot 
come  directly  from  those  in  control.  But  in  her  own 
colleges  the  Church  must  furnish  a  tremendous  propor¬ 
tion  of  the  trained  leadership  for  the  future.  She  must 


PAINTING  THE  WHITE  POST 


ii  7 

send  out  enough  highly  equipped  men  and  women  to 
leaven  the  whole  lump  with  the  spirit  of  the  Great 
Teacher.  This  is  the  plan  in  the  simplest  outline.  It  is 
only  fair  to  say,  without  being  pessimistic,  that  the  Church 
of  Jesus  Christ  has  never  half  realized  the  problem,  and 
that  she  has  not  begun  even  to  dream  in  terms  of  its 
adequate  support. 

Consider  what  this  means.  The  educational  program  of 
any  church  is  only  simple  life  insurance  for  future  civili¬ 
zation.  It  is  our  one  impact  upon  the  fundamental  ques¬ 
tion  as  to  whether  our  civilization  will  succeed  in  reproduc¬ 
ing  itself  and  in.  remaining  permanent  where  other  nations 
have  fallen.  And  if  this  motive  seems  a  little  vast  and  a 
little  vague  to  grip  us  quite  definitely,  let  me  come  a  little 
closer  and  become  a  little  more  concrete.  You  say  you 
do  not  care  much  about  civilization  in  the  abstract,  and 
those  vast  reaches  of  time  when  this  present  generation 
will  cease  to  have  any  direct  interest  in  human  affairs. 
Very  well  then,  put  the  question  in  this  way.  For  what 
do  men  care  most  in  all  this  world  ?  A  normal  father  will 
be  concerned  most  of  all  for  the  children  whom  God  has 
given  him.  He  would  die  for  them.  He  will  toil  and  save 
and  plan  and  sacrifice  for  their  future.  He  arranges  his 
bequests  for  their  comfort  and  happiness  when  he  is  gone. 
Very  well  then,  has  he  ever  asked  himself  what  kind  of 
world  his  son  will  live  in  fifty  years  from  now,  or  what 
kind  of  world  his  grandson  will  live  in  seventy-five  years 
from  now  ?  He  may  give  them  a  good  home,  he  may  pro¬ 
vide  for  them  an  ample  fortune,  but  if  the  world  they  have 
to  live  in  is  a  world  of  tyranny,  a  world  of  bolshevism,  a 
world  of  rotten  immoralities,  a  world  of  war  and  hatred 
and  brutality,  all  he  can  do  for  his  son  or  his  son’s  son  will 


n8 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


be  nullified  and  stultified.  Do  you  not  see  that  you  must  in¬ 
vest  in  the  future  of  America  and  the  future  of  the  world, 
not  only  from  the  larger  motive,  but  because  if  you  do  not 
look  after  these  things,  they  will  ruin  the  life  future  of 
the  dearest  objects  which  engage  your  love  and  planning? 
Get  back  of  Christian  education  because  only  through  it 
comes  the  leadership  that  will  save  America.  And  only 
thus  can  the  world  be  saved,  and  only  thus  can  you  guar^ 
antee  a  decent  place  for  your  children’s  children  to  live  in. 

For  if  the  world  is  to  be  saved  we  must  do  it.  With  all 
our  faults,  America  is  the  best  country  that  the  sun  sees, 
and  when  she  finds  herself  and  takes  her  normal  place  in 
the  leadership  of  Christian  civilization,  she  will  save  the 
world.  I  speak  no  word  derogatory  to  any  of  our  great 
allied  peoples,  especially  to  England,  in  whose  friendship 
and  cooperation  with  us  lies  the  only  hope  of  the  future. 
But  every  old-world  power  is  hampered  by  entanglements 
from  which  we  are  free,  and  in  the  providence  of  God  we 
are  supremely  the  people  who  are  in  a  position  to  take  the 
lead  for  a  new  and  better  order.  You  remember  how  a 
brave  company  of  four  hundred  Scotch  preachers  once 
left  the  Established  Church  for  the  sake  of  a  principle. 
They  gave  up  their  livings  that  they  might  remain  loyal  to 
their  convictions.  They  went  forth  “taking  nothing  of  the 
Gentiles.”  And  when  that  heroic  company  marched  out 
of  the  General  Assembly,  one  of  their  bitterest  opponents, 
unable  to  restrain  his  emotions,  cried,  “Hurrah !  It  couldn’t 
be  done  in  any  country  of  the  world  except  Scotland.”  If 
the  world  is  to  be  saved  it  can’t  be  done  by  any  country  in 
the  world  but  America. 

An  old  friend  of  mine  told  me  of  his  experience  in  the 
opening  days  of  the  World  War.  He  was  in  Germany, 


PAINTING  THE  WHITE  POST 


1 19 

and  though  an  American  citizen,  was  detained  and  suffered 
considerable  embarrassment.  Among  other  things  was 
the  arrest  of  his  sixteen-year-old  son,  who,  by  some 
strange  twist  of  German  police  methods,  was  thrown  into 
jail  as  a  spy.  My  friend  had  extreme  difficulty  in  freeing 
his  son  from  jail  and  in  extricating  himself  from  a  very 
perilous  situation.  He  worked  his  way  down  across  the 
Swiss  border  and  got  at  last  to  an  American  Consulate. 
He  went  in  and  met  the  Consul,  and  looked  about  him  and 
saw  upon  the  walls  the  pictures  of  George  Washington 
and  Abraham  Lincoln  and  William  McKinley  and  Wood- 
row  Wilson ;  and  he  saw  the  old  flag  draped  over  the  door ; 
and  the  Consul  said  to  him,  “Will  you  renew  your  oath  of 
allegiance  to  the  Constitution  and  the  Government  of  the 
United  States?”  And  my  friend  said,  in  a  voice  that 
choked,  “Will  I  ?  Will  I  ?  In  God’s  name ,  lead  me  to  it  ” 
Yes,  the  best  country  that  the  sun  sees! 

“She’s  up  there — Old  Glory — no  tyrant-dealt  scars — 

No  blur  on  her  brightness — no  stain  on  her  stars ! 

The  brave  blood  of  heroes  hath  crimsoned  her  bars — 
She’s  the  flag  of  our  country  forever !” 

Will  you  join  to  keep  Old  Glory  floating  high?  And 
will  you  help  to  keep  her  clean?  Will  you  do  your  part 
in  peace  as  you  did  in  war,  to  make  of  America  a  nation 
without  a  curse,  over  which  there  shall  float  a  flag  without 
a  stain;  so  that  the  blood  shed  by  our  sons  may  not  cry 
out  of  the  ground  against  us;  so  that  the  priceless  blood 
shed  by  God’s  Son  may  at  last  find  its  fruition  in  a  world 
ruled  no  longer  by  fear  and  force,  but  by  faith  and  friend¬ 
ship;  so  that  the  tabernacle  of  God  shall  be  let  down 
among  men,  and  He  dwelling  among  them  in  spirit  if  not 
in  physical  habitation  may  at  last  see  of  the  travail  of  His 
soul  and  be  satisfied  ? 


IX 


LIFE’S  WIDEST  HORIZON 

Text:  And  God  said  to  Solomon,  Because  this  was  in  thy  heart, 
and  thou  hast  not  asked  riches,  wealth,  or  honor,  nor  the 
life  of  them  that  hate  thee,  neither  yet  hast  asked  long 
life;  but  hast  asked  wisdom  and  knowledge  for  thyself, 
that  thou  mayest  judge  my  people,  over  whom  I  have  made 
thee  king:  wisdom  and  knowledge  is  granted  unto  thee; 
and  I  will  give  thee  riches,  and  wealth,  and  honor,  such 
as  none  of  the  kings  have  had  that  have  been  before  thee ; 
neither  shall  there  any  after  thee  have  the  like. 

— II  Chronicles  1:11,  12 

This  is  essentially  a  young  man’s  vision.  There  are 
no  dreams  like  the  dreams  of  youth.  It  is  true,  as  Joel 
put  it,  that  old  men  dream  dreams,  even  as  young  men 
see  visions.  But  the  dreams  of  old  age  are  all  too  often 
extinguished  in  the  black  night  of  disillusionment,  or  else 
they  are  lit  only  by  the  melancholy  moonlight  of  reminis¬ 
cence.  The  visions  of  youth,  however,  are  bathed  in  the 
sunshine  glory  of  unmeasured  possibilities.  And  the 
dream  of  this  young  man  is  shot  through  and  through 
with  the  splendor  of  youth,  because  it  is  gloriously  opu¬ 
lent  in  opportunities.  There  are  so  many,  many  things 
that  young  men  and  young  women  can  do  if  they  will.  At 
the  beginning  of  life’s  journey  the  forks  in  the  road  are 
numerous  and  inviting.  As  the  years  go  by,  the  paths  of 
possibility  close  one  by  one.  We  find  ourselves  toiling 
and  straining  to  do  some  one  thing  indifferently  well; 


120 


LIFE’S  WIDEST  HORIZON 


121 


but  at  the  beginning  we  can  do  everything  victoriously. 
Dr.  Samuel  McChord  Crothers,  the  genial  Boston  preach¬ 
er  and  essayist,  has  spoken  of  “everyone’s  natural  desire 
to  be  somebody  else.”  The  glory  of  the  early  twenties  is 
that  one  can  be  almost  anybody  else  if  he  chooses ! 

Now  this  young  man,  in  his  dream,  stood  at  the  forks 
of  the  road,  and  there  were  many  paths  inviting  him. 
Down  these  various  highways  he  could  dimly  see  beauti¬ 
ful  figures  that  beckoned  him  on  with  rosy  fingers.  Se¬ 
rene  and  unconquerable  he  stood,  with  a  world  at  his 
feet.  Let  us  look  at  him  as  he  chooses  his  goal  and 
starts  on  the  pathway  toward  its  attainment. 

Here  we  find  a  roadway  whose  guidepost  bears  the 
inscription,  “This  way  to  long  life.”  Yet  the  young  man 
passed  it  by.  He  passed  it  by,  not  because  it  is  unworthy 
to  want  life  to  a  green  old  age.  He  passed  it  by,  I  think, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  is  one’s  duty,  other  things 
being  equal,  to  live  as  long  as  one  can.  Life  is  a  very 
sacred  thing,  and  that  was  a  fine  instinct  of  the  Hebrew 
peoples  which  made  old  age  a  signal  mark  of  divine  favor 
and  blessing.  To  the  Oriental  a  short  life  was  an  indi¬ 
cation  of  something  wrong  with  a  man’s  character  or  his 
relations  to  God.  “Bloodthirsty  and  deceitful  men  shall 
not  live  out  half  their  days.”  “With  long  life  will  I  sat¬ 
isfy  him,  and  show  him  my  salvation.”  The  blessing  of 
keeping  God’s  law  meant  “length  of  days  and  years  of 
life.”  Men  speak  of  the  desire  for  permanent  personal 
existence  as  though  it  were  a  selfish  thing  to  want  to  live 
forever.  But  why  is  it  any  more  selfish  to  want  to  live 
forever  than  to  want  to  live  tomorrow?  The  question  of 
selfishness  or  unselfishness  about  that  desire  will  depend 
wholly  upon  whether  we  want  to  live  a  selfish  or  an  un- 


122 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


selfish  life  tomorrow.  It  is  not  selfish  to  want  to  live 
forever  unselfishly.  And  it  is  a  perfectly  natural  and 
normal  ambition  to  seek  length  of  days  here,  for  “the 
light  is  sweet,  and  a  pleasant  thing  it  is  for  the  eyes  to 
behold  the  sun.” 

But  the  young  man,  in  his  dream,  passed  by  the  ambi¬ 
tion  for  long  life — not  because  it  was  a  bad  ambition,  but 
because  it  was  too  narrow,  too  small.  The  quality  of  life 
is  a  larger  thing  than  its  quantity,  and  he  rightly  turned 
from  the  narrow  circle  to  a  wider  one.  There  was  once  a 
colored  woman  who  lived  to  be  more  than  a  hundred  years 
old,  who  never  learned  to  read  or  write,  who  knew  nothing 
of  the  great,  beautiful  things  which  make  life  worth 
while,  and  who  spent  many  of  her  years  in  an  almshouse ; 
yet  she  said,  “I  have  lived  a  successful  life ;  I  have  always 
had  enough  to  eat.”  Now  that  is  a  perfectly  legitimate 
and  normal  definition  of  a  successful  life,  as  far  as  it 
goes.  It  is  not  wrong,  it  is  only  small.  Duty  and  honor 
and  loyalty  are  too  big  for  that  circle.  There  were  mil¬ 
lions  of  young  men  in  the  World  War  who,  with  a  kind 
of  noble  rage  and  splendid  passion  of  sacrifice,  threw 
away  the  prospect  of  long  life  for  the  larger  objective, 
for  those  great  spiritual  ideals  of  liberty,  justice,  and  hu¬ 
manity  without  which  life  itself  would  be  unsupportable. 

I  think  of  that  splendid  boy,  Dinsmore  Ely,  bound  by 
ties  of  relationship  and  affection  through  three  genera¬ 
tions  to  a  church  where  I  once  served  as  pastor.  A  mere 
lad  in  his  teens,  over  yonder  in  the  Massachusetts  Insti¬ 
tute  of  Technology,  he  heard  his  country’s  call,  and,  to 
reach  the  front  in  the  shortest  possible  time,  enlisted  in 
an  ambulance  corps.  Transferred  to  the  aviation  service 
on  the  other  side,  this  high  minded,  clean  souled  young 


LIFE’S  WIDEST  HORIZON 


123 


man  went  to  his  death  in  the  service  of  his  country.  Only 
a  little  while  before  the  end  he  wrote  a  letter  which  ought 
to  be  graven  in  bronze  and  placed  in  every  university  and 
college  in  the  country.  That  letter,  as  much  as  any  other 
one  factor,  pulled  the  Third  Liberty  Loan  out  of  the  rut 
in  the  very  crisis  of  its  seeming  failure.  The  words  of 
this  boy  to  his  mother  were  printed,  and  thirty-five  mil¬ 
lion  copies  were  sent  broadcast  over  the  land.  It  was 
translated  into  many  languages,  and  found  its  way  around 
the  world,  bringing  responses  from  hundreds  of  men  and 
women.  He  wrote,  “I  want  to  say  in  closing,  if  any¬ 
thing  should  happen  to  me  let's  have  no  mourning  in  spirit 
or  in  dress.  Like  a  Liberty  bond,  it  is  an  investment,  not 
a  loss,  when  a  man  dies  for  his  country.  It  is  an  honor 
for  his  family,  and  is  that  a  time  to  weep?  I  would 
rather  have  my  family  rich  in  memories  of  my  life  than 
numbed  in  sorrow  at  my  death.” 

One  thinks  of  John  Hay,  mourning  over  the  early 
death  of  his  own  beloved  boy,  and  out  of  the  depth  of 
his  sorrow  giving  to  the  world  the  melancholy  music  of 
his  noble  sonnet: 

“At  eve  when  the  brief  wintry  day  is  sped, 

I  muse  beside  my  fire’s  faint-flickering  glare — 

Conscious  of  wrinkling  face  and  whitening  hair — 

Of  those  who,  dying  young,  inherited 

The  immortal  youthfulness  of  the  early  dead. 

I  think  of  Raphael’s  grand-seigneurial  air; 

Of  Shelley  and  Keats,  with  laurels  fresh  and  fair 
Shining  unwithered  on  each  sacred  head; 

And  soldier  boys  who  snatched  death’s  starry  prize 
With  sweet  life  radiant  in  their  fearless  eyes, 

The  dreams  of  love  upon  their  beardless  lips, 

Bartering  dull  age  for  immortality; 

Their  memories  hold  in  death’s  unyielding  fee 
The  youth  that  thrilled  them  to  the  finger  tips.” 


124 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


Those  glorious  lads,  the  nineteen  “men  of  the  gold 
star”  upon  our  college  banner,  these  understood,  and 
while  long  life  was  sweet  and  fair  and  to  be  desired,  there 
were  larger  issues  which  made  it  “man’s  perdition  to  be 
safe  when  for  the  truth  he  ought  to  die.”  They  “bar¬ 
tered  dull  age  for  immortality.”  Hail  to  the  victors ! 

And  then  this  young  man,  in  his  dream,  came  to  a 
roadway  whose  signpost  bore  the  inscription,  “This  way 
to  a  career  of  struggle  and  victory.”  The  thought  is 
expressed  in  a  swift,  grim,  oriental  phrase,  “the  life  of 
them  that  hate  thee.”  You  must  understand  that  this 
little  phrase  expressed  broadly  the  idea  of  victory  to  an 
oriental  mind.  If  your  enemy  won,  he  killed  you.  If 
you  won,  you  killed  him.  It  was  quite  a  matter  of  course. 
It  was  all  in  the  day’s  work.  There  were  no  hard  feel¬ 
ings  whatever  about  it.  The  finishing  touch  of  killing 
one’s  enemy  only  furnished  an  incidental  sidelight  to  the 
real  essence  of  the  situation,  which  consisted  in  winning 
out  against  hardships  and  obstacles.  It  meant  struggle 
crowned  by  achievement. 

Now  the  young  man  passed  this  roadway  by.  Solomon 
did  not  choose  to  be  a  fighting  man.  Yet  he  passed  it  by, 
not  because  the  fighting  instinct  is  an  abnormal  thing  in 
humanity,  nor  because  when  rightly  directed  it  is  an  evil 
thing  in  humanity.  Certainly  it  is  a  fact  of  human  nature 
with  which  every  student  of  men  and  affairs  must  deal. 
The  other  day  some  friends  of  mine  took  me  for  a  drive 
through  one  of  the  most  beautiful  parks  in  America. 
Here  and  there  were  noble  pieces  of  statuary,  most  of 
them  works  of  genuine  art.  Yet  with  the  single  excep¬ 
tion  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  who,  though  personally  a  non- 
combatant,  was  commander-in-chief  of  one  of  the  great- 


LIFE’S  WIDEST  HORIZON 


125 


est  armies  the  world  ever  saw,  every  statue  in  the  park 
represented  a  military  man.  I  asked  myself,  “Where  are 
the  great  inventors,  Whitney,  and  McCormick,  and 
Edison?  Where  are  the  great  poets,  Lowell,  and  Poe, 
and  Whitman,  and  Emerson?  Where  are  the  great 
orators,  Webster,  and  Wendell  Phillips,  and  Henry  Clay? 
Where  are  the  great  preachers,  John  Witherspoon,  the 
spiritual  backbone  of  the  American  Revolution ;  and  Hen¬ 
ry  Ward  Beecher,  the  spiritual  backbone  of  the  North  in 
the  Civil  War?”  They  had  been  crowded  out  by  the 
fighting  men.  General  Grant,  in  his  Memoirs,  tells  a 
little  story  of  General  Bragg,  the  great  Confederate  of¬ 
ficer.  “On  one  occasion,  when  stationed  at  a  post  of 
several  companies  commanded  by  a  field  officer,  he  was 
himself  commanding  one  of  the  companies  and  at  the 
same  time  acting  as  post  quartermaster  and  commissary. 
He  was  first  lieutenant  at  the  time,  but  his  captain  was 
detached  on  other  duty.  As  commander  of  the  company 
he  made  a  requisition  upon  the  quartermaster — himself — 
for  something  he  wanted.  As  quartermaster  he  declined 
to  fill  the  requisition,  and  endorsed  on  the  back  of  it  his 
reasons  for  so  doing.  As  company  commander  he  re¬ 
sponded  to  this,  urging  that  his  requisition  called  for 
nothing  but  what  he  was  entitled  to,  and  that  it  was  the 
duty  of  the  quartermaster  to  fill  it.  As  quartermaster  he 
still  persisted  that  he  was  right.  In  this  condition  of  af¬ 
fairs  Bragg  referred  the  whole  matter  to  the  commanding 
officer  of  the  post.  The  latter,  when  he  saw  the  nature 
of  the  matter  referred,  exclaimed :  ‘My  God,  Mr.  Bragg, 
you  have  quarrelled  with  every  officer  in  the  army,  and 
now  you  are  quarrelling  with  yourself.’  ”  This  was  what 
might  be  called  misdirected  fighting  energy;  and  God 


126 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


knows  it  is  not  the  only  case  of  misdirected  fighting 
energy  in  the  world !  Yes,  we  have  at  least  learned  that 
all  fighting  energy  is  misdirected,  unless  it  is  used,  not 
as  an  end  in  itself,  but  as  a  means  to  a  larger  end.  We 
have  at  least  progressed  far  enough  in  the  long,  long, 
winding  trail  by  w’hich  humanity  is  moving  upward  to¬ 
ward  Jesus  Christ,  that  we  have  come  to  recognize  fight¬ 
ing  for  its  own  sake,  and  victory  for  its  own  sake,  as  the 
business  of  beasts  and  not  of  men. 

But  the  young  man  passed  it  all  by,  because  even  at 
the  very  best  it  was  too  small  a  circle  for  his  life. 

And  then  he  saw  in  his  dream  another  roadway,  whose 
signpost  bore  the  inscription,  “This  way  to  a  career  of 
fame  and  honor/’  Once  more  he  passed  by.  Not,  I  take 
it,  because  the  desire  for  honor  is  illegitimate  or  wicked. 
Most  of  those  who  cry  out  against  honor  and  fame  as  a 
motive  in  life  are  of  the  class  of  people  who  have  no 
prospect  of  acquiring  either.  When  a  man  asserts  that 
he  has  no  desire  to  receive  honor  from  his  fellow  men, 
the  chances  are  that  he  is  either  hypocritical  or  abnormal. 
When  a  political  leader,  for  instance,  assures  us  that  he 
has  no  desire  for  public  life,  that  it  would  far  better  suit 
his  shrinking  and  violet-like  modesty  to  remain  a  private 
citizen,  safely  sheltered  in  the  bosom  of  his  family,  and 
that  only  under  pressure  of  insistence  by  his  friends  and 
a  sense  of  responsibility  to  the  public  has  he  been  com¬ 
pelled  to  forego  his  desire  for  humble  obscurity,  and  to 
yield  himself  to  a  totally  distasteful  publicity;  we  feel 
like  replying  to  him,  “My  dear  sir,  I  sincerely  hope  you 
may  gain  the  office  for  which  you  have  been  working 
night  and  day  during  many  months,  but  why  do  you 
choose  deliberately  to  insult  our  intelligence?” 


LIFE’S  WIDEST  HORIZON 


127 


It  is  perfectly  natural  and  normal  and  right  to  strive 
for  honors  from  a  variety  of  good  motives.  Men  seek 
them  that  they  may  pass  down  a  heritage  to  their  chil¬ 
dren.  Men  seek  them  as  a  spur  to  the  best  in  themselves. 
Men  seek  them  as  a  proper  expression  of  aggressive  per¬ 
sonality.  And  men  do  seek  them  honestly  and  rightly  for 
the  sheer  joy  that  comes  out  of  the  approbation  of  their 
fellow  men.  But  this  young  man  passed  by  the  objectives 
of  honor  and  fame,  because,  viewed  by  themselves,  and 
without  a  vital  background,  they  are  perhaps  the  most 
foolish  and  futile  objectives  toward  which  our  energy 
and  labor  can  be  directed.  A  witty  Englishman  once  said 
that  fame  consisted  in  dying  on  the  field  of  battle  in 
India  and  having  one’s  name  misprinted  in  the  London 
Times.  It  might  be  a  healthfully  humiliating  exercise  for 
some  of  us  if  one  were  to  ask  any  cultured  audience  to 
name  the  vice  presidents  of  the  United  States.  Yes,  we 
might  be  even  more  generous  than  that,  and  ask  for  the 
names  of  the  presidents  themselves,  with  rather  doubtful 
results.  In  the  long  reach,  fame  is  a  poor,  bare,  mis¬ 
erable,  futile  thing.  John  Keats  was  a  genius,  yet  his  in¬ 
stinct  was  true  when  he  composed  his  own  epitaph,  “Here 
lies  one  whose  name  was  writ  in  water.”  When  Wolfe 
was  toiling  up  the  slopes  at  Quebec,  where  only  a  little 
later  he  was  to  give  his  life  for  that  great,  epoch-making 
victory  over  Montcalm,  the  victory  that  settled  the  fate 
of  the  American  continent,  it  is  said  that  he  repeated 
softly  to  a  friend: 

“The  boast  of  heraldry,  the  pomp  of  power, 

And  all  that  beauty,  all  that  wealth  e’er  gave, 

Await  alike  the  inevitable  hour : 

The  paths  of  glory  lead  but  to  the  grave;” 


128 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


and  added,  “I  would  rather  have  written  those  lines  than 
take  Quebec  tomorrow.” 

And  then  the  young  man,  in  his  dream,  came  to  another 
roadway,  whose  signboard  bore  the  inscription,  “This 
way  to  a  career  of  wealth  and  riches.”  And  once  more 
he  passed  by  on  the  other  side.  And  he  passed  by,  not 
because  money  is  an  evil,  but  because  the  love  of  money 
is  a  root  of  all  kinds  of  evil.  The  curse  was  not  in  the 
Rhinegold  of  Richard  Wagner’s  operas,  but  only  in  the 
selfish  seeking  and  use  of  the  Rhinegold.  Wealth  and 
riches  are  crystallized  life  and  labor.  They  are  the  accu¬ 
mulated  result  of  the  brain  and  of  the  hand,  and  of  the 
heart  too.  The  woman  who  out  of  her  penury  cast  in 
two  mites  to  the  Lord’s  treasury  was  said  by  Jesus 
literally  to  have  cast  in  “her  whole  life.”  Money  may  be 
as  honorable  and  as  valuable  as  the  life  which  it  crystal¬ 
lizes  and  expresses,  just  as  it  is  liable  to  the  same  kinds 
of  misuse. 

A  good  many  years  ago  a  great-hearted  man  of  God 
preached  a  sermon  worth  a  million  dollars.  Not  many 
pulpit  discourses,  I  grant  you,  have  that  commercial  value. 
But  this  man  went  into  a  Chicago  pulpit  and  preached  a 
sermon  on  what  he  would  do  with  such  a  sum  of  money. 
At  the  close  of  the  service  a  business  man  came  up  to 
him  and  said,  “Did  you  mean  what  you  were  preaching 
today?”  The  preacher  replied,  “I  did.”  And  the  bus¬ 
iness  man  said,  “Then,  sir,  I  have  a  million  dollars  for 
you  whenever  you  want  to  put  that  sermon  to  work.” 
The  sermon  had  been  a  plea  for  the  education  of  boys 
in  a  great  city,  and  the  splendid  Armour  Institute  of 
Technology  stands  today  because  Gunsaulus  had  the 
vision  to  use  a  million  dollars,  and  because  Armour  had 


LIFE’S  WIDEST  HORIZON 


129 


the  million  dollars  with  which  to  translate  the  vision  into 
fact.  “Useless  each  without  the  other!”  And  while 
Solomon  did  not  depreciate  the  million  dollars,  he  rightly 
decided  that  the  vision  was  a  larger  thing  even  than  the 
money.  He  passed  by  the  roadway  to  wealth,  not  because 
it  was  wrong,  but  because  there  was  something  larger 
than  money  in  the  ideal  purpose  that  makes  wealth  a  ser¬ 
vant  rather  than  a  master. 

At  last  the  young  man,  in  his  dream,  came  to  a  roadway 
whose  signpost  bore  the  inscription,  “This  way  to  a  life 
of  wisdom  and  knowledge.”  And  with  a  set,  resolute 
face  he  turns  toward  that  path.  With  unhesitating  step 
he  starts  his  life  march  upon  it.  He  chose  it,  not  because 
it  was  the  only  good,  but  because  it  was  the  largest,  all- 
inclusive  good.  He  chose  it  in  the  spirit  of  Christ,  who 
said,  “Seek  ye  first  his  kingdom,  and  his  righteousness  ; 
and  all  these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you.”  The  event 
proved  that  the  choice  of  wisdom  and  knowledge  con¬ 
tained  all  the  good  in  all  the  rest;  riches  and  honor,  vic¬ 
tory  and  long  life  did  come  to  him,  because  he  had  drawn 
the  widest  circle,  the  circle  in  which  all  the  rest  could  be 
inscribed.  Oh,  it  is  true  that  Solomon’s  life  had  its  later 
tragedy.  But  the  tragedy  came,  not  because  he  persisted 
in  this  choice,  but  because  by  and  by  he  proved  a  traitor 
to  it.  And  this  choice  has  given  his  name  its  immortality. 

Who  can  fail  to  honor  a  life  which  turns  from  all  these 
splendid  possibilities  to  gratify  a  scholar’s  ambition,  to 
slake  the  thirst  for  knowledge?  What  has  not  that 
splendid  passion  to  know  accomplished  in  the  history  of 
the  human  race  ?  It  has  been  the  motor  nerve  of  progress. 
The  picture  Mr.  Browning  draws  of  the  old  Grammarian, 
weak  and  weary  in  body,  yet  with  indomitable  will  and 


130 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


purpose,  following  on  through  incredible  difficulties, 
that  he  might  learn  and  learn,  that  he  might  slake  that 
insatiable  thirst  from  the  flagon  of  knowledge,  is  one 
which  should  be  graven  deeply  on  the  heart  of  every  stu¬ 
dent.  For  the  love  of  knowledge  men  have  cheerfully 
risked  and  lost  their  lives,  they  have  given  up  honors, 
they  have  surrendered  wealth.  In  the  hunger  to  know, 
men  have  delved  into  the  seas,  and  scaled  the  heavens, 
and  dared  the  frozen  pole,  and  sweltered  and  died  under 
the  tropical  sun.  For  it  they  have  willingly  given  their 
bodies  to  be  experimented  upon  at  the  risk  of  disease 
and  death.  For  it  the  pale  scholar  has  burned  the  mid¬ 
night  oil,  and  into  that  sacrificial  flame  has  cheerfully 
thrown  his  health,  his  happiness,  and  his  fame.  Ever 
eager  to  know  what  lies  back  of  beyond,  ever  restless  at 
the  sight  of  an  uncharted  sea  or  an  unsolved  mystery, 
the  scholar  has  been  the  pioneer,  the  fine  forerunner  of 
civilization.  Mr.  Lowell,  in  his  essay  on  Abraham  Lin¬ 
coln,  speaks  of  Lincoln’s  mind  moving  like  the  advance 
of  a  Roman  legion,  and  wherever  it  went  “his  advanced 
posts  became  colonies.”  The  outposts  of  the  scholar’s 
research  become  the  colonies  of  the  practical  men  who 
follow  in  his  footsteps.  What  a  splendid  epitaph  is  that 
of  John  Richard  Green  at  Mentone.  “He  died  learning.” 

But  even  this  noble  ideal  is  grounded  in  a  greater  one. 
Back  of  knowledge  stands  wisdom.  Without  entering 
into  any  finely  drawn  distinctions,  let  me  put  the  double 
significance  in  a  single  phrase:  Wisdom  is  knowledge 
backed  by  character.  It  is  more  than  a  hard,  dry,  pedantic 
search  for  facts.  As  Wordsworth  said,  “Wisdom  doth 
live  with  children  round  her  knee.”  It  is  a  search  for 
knowledge,  softened  by  the  wonder  and  the  reverence  of 


LIFE’S  WIDEST  HORIZON 


131 

a  little  child.  Without  this,  knowledge  itself  becomes  not 
only  futile,  but  dangerous.  Faust  had  knowledge,  but 
not  wisdom.  He  was  able  to  cry, 

“  ’Tis  true  I  have  more  cunning  than  all  your  dull  tribe, 
Magister  and  doctor,  priest,  parson,  and  scribe.” 

But  knowledge  without  wisdom  was  the  temptress 
through  whose  seductions  Faust  sold  his  soul  to  the  devil. 
It  is  of  knowledge  in  this  sense  that  Tennyson  sang: 

“Hold  thou  the  good :  define  it  well : 

For  fear  divine  Philosophy 

Should  push  beyond  her  mark,  and  be 

Procuress  to  the  Lords  of  Hell.” 

Educational  experts  quote  the  figures  summed  up  and 
worked  out  by  percentages,  showing  the  verdict  of  the 
engineers’  associations  in  America  as  to  the  qualities  that 
make  a  successful  engineer.  And  it  has  been  pointed  out 
that  this  composite  verdict  as  to  the  qualities  which  se¬ 
cure  positions  and  promotion  rated  technical  ability  nine 
per  cent,  and  character  forty-one  per  cent.  You  cannot 
divorce  character  from  religion.  You  may  and  you  should 
divorce  it  from  sectarianism,  but  it  can  never  be  separated 
from  that  great  center  of  all  true  religious  life,  the  ac¬ 
knowledgment  of  God  the  Father  through  Jesus  Christ, 
His  Son  and  our  Saviour. 

For  forty-seven  years  the  city  of  Strasburg  lay  under 
the  iron  hand  of  the  German  conqueror.  During  all  that 
time  the  French  language  was  forbidden,  and  any  word 
of  loyalty  to  France,  spoken  or  written,  was  a  criminal 
offense.  It  is  said  that  every  New  Year’s  Eve,  promptly 
at  midnight,  the  students  of  Strasburg  met  in  solemn  as¬ 
sembly  and,  even  with  the  guards  looking  on,  passed  the 


132 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


great  statue  of  Kleber,  the  French  commander  during 
Napoleon’s  time.  Then  the  students  gazed  upon  this 
statue,  yes,  and  gazed  beyond  it  to  Him  that  sitteth  in  the 
heavens  and  rules  the  affairs  of  men.  Then,  without  a 
spoken  word,  each  student  renewed  his  loyalty  to  France, 
his  fatherland,  and  to  the  day  of  liberty. 

I  call  upon  you  to  choose  the  way  toward  the  widest 
goal,  the  one  goal  that  includes  all  that  is  best  in  every 
other.  Knowledge  backed  by  character,  character  backed 
by  religion,  religion  centered  in  Christ.  That  is  the  su¬ 
preme,  the  all-inclusive,  objective  of  a  great  life.  Take 
your  stand  and  lift  your  eyes  once  more  to  the  colossal 
figure  of  our  Great  Commander.  Renew  a  supreme  and 
unfaltering  loyalty  to  Him  in  whom  alone  you  find  life’s 
widest  circle. 

“He  is  a  path  if  any  are  misled, 

He  is  a  robe  if  any  naked  be; 

If  any  chance  to  hunger,  he  is  bread; 

If  any  be  a  bondman,  he  is  free; 

If  any  be  but  weak,  how  strong  is  he ! 

To  dead  men  life,  he  is  to  sick  men  health, 

To  blind  men  sight,  and  to  the  poor  man  wealth, 

A  treasure  without  loss,  a  pleasure  without  stealth.” 


X 


THE  SONS  OF  BEATEN  OIL 

In  Ian  Maclaren’s  beautiful  tales  of  the  Scotch  glen, 
Domsie,  the  village  schoolmaster,  pleads  with  Drums- 
heugh,  the  village  miser,  for  the  money  with  which  to 
educate  George  Howe,  a  prize  pupil,  “a  lad  o’  pairts.” 
Drumsheugh,  with  natural  reluctance  toward  the  loss  of 
worldly  gear,  or  with  an  equally  natural  desire  to  tease 
and  test  his  old  friend,  affects  to  deny  his  request.  The 
hard  refusal  stirred  the  soul  of  the  pedantic  old  parish 
schoolmaster.  “The  spirit  of  the  Humanists  awoke  with¬ 
in  him,  and  he  smote  with  all  his  might,  bidding  good-bye 
to  his  English  as  one  flings  away  the  scabbard  of  a  sword. 
‘Ye  think  that  a’m  asking  a  great  thing  when  I  plead  for 
a  pickle  notes  to  give  a  puir  laddie  a  college  education. 
I  tell  ye,  man,  a’m  honorin’  ye  and  givin’  ye  the  fairest 
chance  ye’ll  ever  hae  o’  winning  wealth.  Gin  ye  store 
the  money  ye  hae  scrapit  by  mony  a  hard  bargain,  some 
heir  ye  never  saw’ll  gar  it  flee  in  chambering  and  wan¬ 
tonness.  Gin  ye  hed  the  heart  to  spend  it  on  a  lad  o’ 
pairts  like  Geordie  Hoo,  ye  wud  hae  two  rewards  nae 
man  could  tak  frae  ye.  Ane  wud  be  the  honest  gratitude 
o’  a  laddie  whose  desire  for  knowledge  ye  hed  sateesfied, 
and  the  second  wud  be  this — anither  scholar  in  the  land ; 
and  a’m  thinking  with  auld  John  Knox  that  ilka  scholar 
is  something  added  to  the  riches  of  the  commonwealth.’  ” 
There  is  no  more  tender  story  in  all  literature  than  the 


i33 


134 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


training  of  this  young  scholar.  Even  though  George 
Howe  dies  before  he  can  translate  his  noble  intellectual 
equipment  into  practical  service,  we  feel  that  Drums- 
heugh’s  hardly-earned  shillings  have  not  been  spent  in 
vain.  This  fine  flower  of  Scottish  university  life  is  indeed 
cut  down  by  an  untimely  frost.  But  its  fragrance  had 
quickened  dead  souls  into  new  birth.  Its  brief  loveliness 
left  an  inalienable  inheritance.  We  feel  that  it  was  far 
better  for  this  fair  lad  to  have  loved  learning,  and  for 
the  sake  of  that  supreme  love  to  have  lost  his  life,  than 
never  to  have  loved  it  at  all.  And  the  dying  scholar  jus¬ 
tified  the  bold  statement  of  the  Scotch  reformer.  For  his 
life  and  character  furnished  a  permanent  addition  to  the 
riches  of  the  commonwealth. 

We  who  are  heirs  of  John  Knox  must  never  forget 
that  the  traditions  of  the  scholar  are  part  of  our  spiritual 
inheritance.  They  have  been  our  glory,  and  we  dare  not 
let  that  glory  fade.  There  is  a  type  of  religious  worker, 
high  in  emotional  voltage,  low  in  clear,  steadfast  think¬ 
ing,  which  would  have  us  believe  that  learning  is  at  its 
best  futile,  and  at  its  worst  dangerous. }  Now  it  is  true 
that  God,  who  works  in  divers  manners,  does  not  depend 
upon  the  scholar  alone  for  His  results.  He  may  call  a 
farmer,  a  fisherman,  a  shepherd,  a  tinker,  a  gypsy,  a  shoe 
salesman,  a  ball  player,  to  great  tasks  and  victorious  serv¬ 
ice.  But  if  the  rule  cannot  estop  the  exception,  much 
less  can  the  exception  estop  the  rule.  And  I  believe  the 
rule  to  be  that  a  good  Christian  becomes  a  better  one  if 
he  develops  a  sound  mind  in  a  sound  body,  a  trained 
ability  to  think,  a  large  and  fresh  and  accurate  collection 
of  facts,  and  a  wide  horizon  of  intellectual  vision.  God’s 
workmen  must  study  to  show  themselves  approved  unto 


THE  SONS  OF  BEATEN  OIL 


135 


Him.  Christian  service  neglects  rounded  scholarship  at 
its  peril.  This  has  been  the  lesson  of  history.  The  great 
heresies  and  the  cults  and  the  fanaticisms  have  always 
been  born  out  of  unclear  thinking  by  untrained  minds. 
Consecrated?  Yes!  “Sons  of  oil”  was  Zechariah’s 
graphic  term  for  dedicated  men.  But  no  cheap  oil,  no 
crude  stuff,  adulterated,  unstrained,  unworked!  “Beaten 
oil”  for  the  sanctuary ;  that  was  God’s  law.  Oil  that  was 
purified  and  tested,  sweet  and  true  and  clear,  must  be 
brought  to  His  service.  And  we  are  to  be  “Sons  of  Beaten 
Oil.”  We  dare  not  use  crude  stuff  in  God’s  house  while 
making  shift  to  palliate  our  sheer  intellectual  laziness  by 
cheap  platitudes  about  the  simple  gospel.  Many  crimes 
have  been  committed  in  the  name  of  the  “simple  gospel.” 
Such  a  gospel  is  quite  often  an  easy  alibi  for  the  sluggish 
mind  which  shrinks  from  grappling  with  the  great  funda¬ 
mental  problems  of  life.  There  can  be  no  more  tragic 
error  than  to  assume  that  religious  education  can  dispense 
with  the  stern  Standards  of  scholarship.  On  the  contrary, 
the  church  college  must  be  able  to  prepare  men  for  the 
world  of  scholars  who  may  stand  along  with  the  finished 
product  of  the  best  university  life,  clear-eyed  and  un¬ 
afraid. 

It  is  true  that  God  did  choose  the  weak  things  of  the 
world  to  confound  the  mighty.  But  this  does  not  imply 
intellectual  weakness.  It  meant  weakness  in  resources, 
in  wealth,  in  social  prestige  and  political  pulls  if  you 
please.  But  these  words  came  from  the  most  finely 
trained  intellect  of  his  time. 

It  is  true  also  that  “unlearned  and  ignorant  men”  made 
up  part  at  least  of  the  crowd  that  were  eye  witnesses 
of  the  great  gospel  drama.  There  is  an  old  principle  of 


136 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


English  common  law  which  submits  questions  of  ordinary 
fact  to  a  jury  of  twelve  plain  men.  The  twelve  apostles 
were  in  a  manner  of  speaking  a  jury  of  common  men  to 
pass  upon  the  facts  of  common  observation  about  Jesus. 
But  English  common  law  also  supposed  that  the  sig¬ 
nificance  of  the  facts,  the  principles  by  which  they  are 
to  be  judged,  and  the  conclusions  to  be  drawn  from  them, 
should  be  developed  by  lawyers  and  judges,  by  trained 
scholars.  The  significance  of  the  gospel  facts  witnessed 
by  the  apostolic  jury  of  twelve  plain  men  was  worked  out 
by  a  lawyer’s  mind,  in  the  intellectual  processes  of  the 
most  highly  educated  gentleman  of  his  time,  known  in 
history  as  the  Apostle  Paul.  When  the  opinions  of  the 
Church  regarding  the  person  of  Christ  were  finally  crys¬ 
tallized,  early  in  the  fourth  century,  it  was  under  the 
skillful  touch  of  another  trained  scholar,  Athanasius, 
whom  Julian  in  derision  called  “a  manikin” ;  but  who  as 
a  mere  boy  dominated  the  Council  of  Nice  by  the  sheer 
weight  of  his  trained  intellect,  back  of  which  were  the 
passions  of  a  great  consecrated  heart.  The  profoundest 
thinking  in  Christian  anthropology,  thinking  which  in  a 
sense  guides  the  Church  today  in  its  study  of  the  gospel 
of  human  sin  and  need,  came  a  century  later  from  another 
great  scholar,  Augustine.  Every  time  we  preach  the 
Cross  we  are  following  in  the  footsteps  of  the  scholars 
Anselm  and  Bernard.  For  us  the  Protestant  Reformation 
centers  around  a  French  gentleman  and  scholar,  John 
Calvin,  the  first  writer  of  pure,  classical  French:  “never 
did  the  right  word  fail  him;  he  called  it  and  it  came.” 
With  his  highly  trained  legal  mind  aflame  with  a  passion¬ 
ate  devotion  to  Christ  and  liberty,  this  young  man  at  the 
age  of  twenty-six  struck  out  the  supreme  handbook  of 


THE  SONS  OF  BEATEN  OIL 


137 


the  Protestant  Reformation.  It  was  an  Oxford  gentle¬ 
man  and  scholar,  John  Wesley,  who  at  the  very  ebb  tide 
of  religious  life  and  thought  in  England  wrought  a  great 
revival  which  gave  to  modern  Christianity  the  Methodist 
Church  and  saved  the  world  from  the  dry  rot  of  English 
deism.  And  John  Knox  held  that  it  was  the  duty  of  the 
Church  to  nourish  centers  where  learning  might  be  given 
even  for  learning’s  sake.  Let  it  always  be  remembered 
that  the  beacon  lights  of  mediaeval  and  modern  religious 
life  were  in  their  day  and  age  the  peers  of  the  world’s 
best  scholars. 

It  is  true  one  might  consider  certain  advantages  of  the 
uneducated.  There  is  an  “infinite  capacity  of  the  human 
mind  to  resist  the  introduction  of  useful  knowledge” 
which  bears  a  direct  ratio  to  an  infinite  and  untroubled 
dogmatism  in  directing  the  minds  and  consciences  of 
others.  A  witty  contemporary  said  of  Lord  Macaulay, 
“I  wish  I  was  as  cock-sure  of  any  thing  as  Tom  Macaulay 
is  of  every  thing.”  It  is  sometimes  the  privilege  of 
ignorance  to  be  more  sure  of  everything  than  the  scholar 
is  of  anything,  in  the  sense  of  finality.  And  a  man  whose 
untroubled  mental  vacuity  has  never  even  dreamed  con¬ 
cerning  the  existence  of  certain  perplexing  problems  in 
life  and  thought,  much  less  grappled  with  them,  is  some¬ 
times  accustomed  to  pass  final  judgment  upon  souls  who 
in  pain  and  agony  must  fight  their  way  out  into  the  sun¬ 
light.  I  have  heard  the  bitter  hue  and  cry  of  heresy 
hunters  raised  against  a  sensitive  soul  who  had  known 
what  it  was  to  fall  upon  the  floor  in  a  sheer  agony  of 
weeping  through  the  intensity  of  his  eager  yearning  to 
find  the  truth  and  follow  it. 

Now  peace  purchased  at  the  price  of  ignorance  is  far 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


138 

too  expensive.  It  is  unmanly  and  degenerating.  Easy 
dogmatism  is  the  peculiar  prerogative  of  the  uneducated; 
painful  grappling  with  ever-elusive  problems  the  unend¬ 
ing  task  of  the  scholar.  But  it  is  his  glory  that  he  dare 
not  purchase  peace  at  the  price  of  intellectual  dishonesty 
or  of  intellectual  cowardice.  Better  far  than  the  smug 
contentment  of  a  static  mind  is  the  agony  of  the  young 
scholar  weeping  in  the  night  and  falling  on  the  great 
world  altar  stair  that  slopes  through  the  darkness  up  to 
God.  Far  better  Frederick  W.  Robertson,  at  one  time 
crazed  with  doubts,  pacing  the  shores  of  the  sea  with  the 
very  heavens  brass  over  his  head.  For  mark  you,  when 
Robertson  emerges,  as  he  did  emerge,  into  the  sunlight, 
he  has  a  peace  that  no*  untrained  mind  can  ever  expe¬ 
rience.  It  is  not  the  peace  of  him  who  has  never  gone 
down  to  the  battle,  but  of  him  who  has  emerged  to  the 
victory.  Far  better  than  the  easy  dogmatism  of  the  ig¬ 
norant  is  the  dying  cry  of  Goethe,  “More  light.” 

“The  easy  path  of  the  lowland 
Hath  little  of  grand  or  new, 

But  the  toilsome  ascent  leads  on 

✓  * 

To  a  grand  and  glorious  view. 

Peopled  and  warm  the  valley, 

Lonely  and  chill  the  height, 

But  the  path  that  is  nearest  the  storm-cloud 
Is  nearest  the  stars  of  light.” 

Consider  for  one  thing  knowledge  in  the  aspect  of  in¬ 
herent  pleasure.  What  can  compare  with  the  sheer  joy 
of  widening  our  intellectual  boundaries?  To  the  eager 
mind  every  fresh  discovery  brings  something  akin  to 
ecstasy.  It  is  like  “some  watcher  of  the  skies  when  a  new 
planet  swims  into  his  ken.”  Every  new  intellectual  ac¬ 
quirement  opens  soul  windows  skyward.  One  might 


THE  SONS  OF  BEATEN  OIL 


139 


accept  Kant’s  dictum  that  the  human  mind  is  an  island 
surrounded  by  an  impenetrable  sea.  Impenetrable,  per* 
haps,  yet  who  would  not  have  the  sheer  joy  of  sailing  his 
frail  craft  as  far  as  he  can  out  toward  the  dim  horizons 
of  this  fascinating  universe?  Unfortunate  as  is  the  con* 
dition  of  the  poor  scholar  with  large  capacity  for  en¬ 
joyment  and  little  means  to  satisfy  that  capacity,  it  is  as 
nothing  to  the  infinite  tragedy  of  the  wealthy  ignoramus 
who  has  the  means  of  enjoyment  without  the  capacity. 
To  be  concrete,  I  know  of  a  man  who  in  a  successful 
business  career  has  acquired  millions.  Yet  now,  in  middle 
life,  with  no  home,  no  circle  of  friends,  no  intellectual 
enjoyments,  no  knowledge  of  art  or  music  or  literature, 
no  zest  of  travel,  no  desire  for  service,  his  soul  is  dying 
of  deep  weariness  because  its  upper  windows,  toward  the 
stars  and  the  free  sunlight,  have  never  been  opened. 

What  wonder  that  such  a  man  has  little  belief  in,  or  care 

/ 

for,  personal  immortality!  Why,  the  joy  of  heaven  is  in 
the  eternally  widening  horizon  of  knowledge.  More  and 
more  ours  will  be  the  zest  of  those  who  come  to  know  as 
they  are  known,  and  who  have  the  infinite  ranges  of  this 
great  universe,  inwrought  with  intellect  and  majesty  and 
beauty,  as  a  field  of  study.  Ours  eternally  the  joy  of  the 
pioneer,  the  insatiable  thirst  for  fresh  discovery  which 
furnishes  new  allurement  with  every  new  plane  of  in¬ 
tellectual  attainment.  When  men  catch  the  secret  of  that 
joy  they  care  nothing  for  scholarship  as  a  means  of  gain¬ 
ing  wealth  or  fame.  They  leave  to  others  those  pitiful 
by-products,  because  in  the  sheer  joy  of  the  learning  they 
have  that  which  makes  all  other  blessings  seem  bare  and 
futile.  Mr.  Kipling  has  put  the  spirit  of  it  in  his  picture 
of  the  pioneer : 


140 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


“Well  I  know  who’ll  take  the  credit — all  the  clever  chaps 
that  followed — 

Came,  a  dozen  men  together — never  knew  my  desert 
fears ; 

Tracked  me  by  the  camps  I’d  quitted,  used  the  water 
holes  I’d  hollowed. 

They’ll  go  back  and  do  the  talking.  They’ll  be  called 
the  Pioneers ! 

They  will  find  my  sites  of  townships — not  the  cities  that 
I  set  there. 

They  will  rediscover  rivers — not  my  rivers  heard  at  night. 

By  my  own  old  marks  and  bearings  they  will  show  me 
how  to  get  there, 

By  the  lonely  cairns  I  builded  they  will  guide  my  feet 
aright. 

Have  I  named  one  single  river?  Have  I  claimed  one 
single  acre? 

Have  I  kept  one  single  nugget — (barring  samples)  ? 

No,  not  I. 

Because  my  price  was  paid  me  ten  times  over  by  my 
Maker. 

But  you  wouldn’t  understand  it.  You  go  up  and  occupy.” 

So  the  scholar  moves  toward  fresh  discoveries  with  an 
insatiable  appetite  and  a  joy  that  can  neither  be  shared 
nor  understood  by  the  smug  plodders  who  follow  in  his 
footsteps. 

Consider  also  knowledge  as  power.  Back  of  all  phys¬ 
ical  forces,  back  of  the  colossal  masses  of  men  and  muni¬ 
tions,  it  was  the  intellect  of  a  few  trained  minds  which 
won  the  war.  Brain  pitted  against  brain,  the  issues  were 
joined.  Physical  forces  were  only  the  rooks  and  pawns  in 
the  game.  Trained  minds  were  the  real  weapons.  And 
if  the  peace  which  ensued  had  been  shaped  by  the  hands 


THE  SONS  OF  BEATEN  OIL 


141 

of  trained  scholars,  rather  than  of  supple  and  facile  poli¬ 
ticians,  we  should  have  a  different  world  today ! 

Not  long  ago  the  president  of  a  notable  American  uni¬ 
versity  told  me  about  a  distinguished  inventor  who  has 
won  world- wide  fame.  Not  a  college-bred  man,  this 
mighty  scientist  has  heaped  unending  scorn  and  derision 
upon  the  training  of  the  schools.  Assuming  that  the 
business  of  education  was  to  furnish  to  men  a  miscellany 
of  facts,  rather  than  to  give  them  trained  minds  to  grasp 
the  significance  of  facts,  this  distinguished  gentleman  has 
condemned  our  colleges  in  toto  because  certain  graduates 
could  not  tell  the  kind  of  wood  used  in  axe  handles,  or 
the  depth  of  the  Pacific  ocean  a  hundred  miles  east  of 
the  Hawaiian  Islands.  Yet  the  university  president  told 
me  how  at  the  crucial  hour  of  the  World  War  he  was 
called  to  the  telephone  late  one  night.  The  great  inventor 
was  on  the  line,  and  he  wanted  help.  Working  for  weeks 
upon  the  problem  of  detecting  the  submarine  by  means 
of  vibrations  in  the  water,  he  had  failed.  In  answer  to  his 
appeal  for  assistance  the  president  of  that  university  sent 
to  him  a  young  scientist,  a  finished  product  of  modern 
college  life,  a  man  whose  cultural  studies  were  pursued, 
I  am  proud  to  say,  in  The^  College  of  Wooster.  And 
the  highly  trained  “theoretical”  scholar  brought  to  the 
“practical”  inventor  just  the  help  that  he  needed. 
Through  this  timely  assistance  the  problem  was  solved. 
But  neither  then  nor  now  has  this  “self-made  man  who 
worships  his  creator”  paused  in  the  torrent  of  invective 
against  college  scholars  long  enough  to  acknowledge  in  a 
sportsman’s  way  the  help  which  college  scholarship 
brought  him  in  his  time  of  need. 

The  fact  is  that,  other  things  being  equal,  there  is  no 


142 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


limit  to  the  possibilities  before  a  young  man  or  a  young 

woman  who  knows  “a  little  of  everything  and  everything 

of  something/’  and  who  has  that  knowledge  organized 

and  balanced  in  a  highly  disciplined  mind.  If  you  can 

speak  with  the  command  and  authority  that  come  from  the 

final  knowledge  of  what  you  are  talking  about,  “Yours 

is  the  Earth  and  everything  that’s  in  it.”  The  power 

of  the  New  Testament  Church  came  from  men  who 

were  able  to  say,  “We  speak  that  which  we  know.”  The 

Master  Himself,  who  spake  as  never  man  spake,  had  al- 

* 

ways  the  ease  of  an  expert  and  the  finality  of  an  author¬ 
ity.  His  simplicity  was  never  that  of  intellectual  limita¬ 
tion,  but  that  of  one  who  knew  his  subject  clear  through. 
The  crystal-clear  and  almost  childlike  announcement  of 
great  fundamental  truths  is  possible  only  to  one  who  has 
dropped  his  intellectual  plummet  to  the  very  bottom  of 
truth’s  deep  sea. 

The  third  phase  of  the  matter  presents  itself  to  us  as 
we  think  of  scholarship  in  terms  of  service.  It  is,  I  grant 
you,  quite  possible  to  think  of  learning  apart  from  serv¬ 
ice.  There  is  a  pursuit  of  knowledge  which  is  shot 
through  and  through  with  selfishness,  commercialism  and 
essential  vulgarity.  It  is,  however,  to  be  noted  of  schol¬ 
arship  in  its  broad  sense  and  its  long-time  aspect,  that  it 
has  ever  maintained  noble  ideals  of  disinterested  service. 
This  has  been  true  because  in  the  end  selfishness,  com¬ 
mercialism,  and  vulgarity  are  automatically  destructive  of 
the  spirit  which  makes  the  scholar.  A  certain  measure  of 
idealism  is  fundamental  to  the  quest  for  knowledge,  and 
the  ethical  code  of  those  who  have  been  on  this  great 
quest  will  bear  comparison  with  that  of  any  group  of  men 
whatsoever.  The  dangers  of  learning  we  can  all  under- 


THE  SONS  OF  BEATEN  OIL 


M3 


stand.  There  is  of  course  the  danger  of  undue  pride  of 
learning  for  its  own  sake.  This  hardens  down  into  the 
mere  pedantry  of  those  who,  like  the  Meistersingers  in 
Richard  Wagner’s  opera,  lose  the  spirit  of  musical  ex¬ 
pression  in  slavish  adherence  to  technical  rules.  Then 
there  is  the  danger  of  isolation  in  the  pursuit  of  learn¬ 
ing — that  the  student  or  teacher  should  be  out  of  the 
warm  currents  of  normal  life.  He  must  ever  keep  in 
mind  that  he  can  know  life  only  as  he  lives.  There  is  the 
danger,  too,  of  irresolution  and  indecision,  as  an  outcome 
of  much  learning.  Sometimes  vigorous  volitions  of  the 
will  become  impossible  in  scholars,  like  Hamlet,  “sickbed 
o’er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought.”  There  is  danger,  too, 
in  the  coldness  of  scholarship.  The  vast  wind-swept 
spaces  under  the  fixed  stars  are  dark  and  gloomy  and 
freezing  in  temperature.  Men  who  study  in  that  field 
are  sometimes  chilled  to  the  very  marrow  of  the  soul. 

All  of  these  perils,  however,  may  be  obviated  if  the 
scholar  keeps  steadily  in  mind  that  learning  can  perpet¬ 
uate  itself  only  in  the  noble  spirit  of  service.  Once  ap¬ 
preciating  this,  the  learned  man  will  throw  aside  all  pride 
and  become  as  the  greatest  scholars  have  usually  been, 
simple  as  a  little  child.  He  will  avoid  an  isolated  life. 
He  will  not  stand,  as  Henry  Adams  did,  with  arms 
akimbo,  gazing  at  the  procession  from  the  point  of  view 
of  a  blase  and  cynical  spectator.  He  will  be  a  part  of  the 
procession  and  carry  a  banner  and  lift  his  voice  in  the 
cheers  and  songs  of  his  brother  men.  Moreover,  he  will 
check  up  the  abstractions  of  life  by  a  constant  recourse 
to  what  Professor  James  called  the  “will  to  believe.”  He 
will  not  give  way  to  the  paralysis  of  all  resolve  in  an  air 
of  negations  and  abstractions.  Above  all,  in  deliberately 


144 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


choosing  to  serve  his  fellow  men  he  will  learn  to  love 
them,  and  the  supreme  danger  of  what  is  called  cold 
scholarship  will  never  even  threaten  him.  For  he  that  is 
greatest  of  all  in  learning  should  be  servant  of  all.  The 
scholar  must  set  the  ranges  for  civilization.  He  sweeps 
the  past  through  history,  biology,  geology,  archeology, 
and  the  classics.  He  evaluates  the  present  by  the  sciences, 
physical,  social,  political,  and  theological.  He  pierces  the 
future  with  a  poet’s  eye,  the  intuitions  of  the  seer  and 
the  prophet.  His  study  of  great  literatures  in  English  and 
in  all  the  modern  languages  makes  of  him  an  inter¬ 
national  mediator  and  a  forerunner  of  the  coming  “Par¬ 
liament  of  man,  the  Federation  of  the  world.” 

I  have  heard  of  an  elderly  lady  who  wanted  to  see  New 
York.  She  came  into  the  great  metropolis  by  the  under¬ 
ground  lines  of  the  New  York  Central.  She  took  the 
underground  shuttle  train  to  Times  Square.  She  trav¬ 
eled  the  subway  to  the  Battery.  She  came  back,  still 
underground,  to  the  Pennsylvania  Station.  She  went  out 
of  New  York  through  the  Hudson  Tunnel.  When  asked 
for  her  impressions  she  replied  that  she  had  had  a 
“worm’s  eye  view  of  New  York.”  But  a  little  later  came 
another  visitor,  Albert,  King  of  the  Belgians.  Wearied 
one  day  with  many  social  attentions,  he  traveled  incognito 
up  the  Hudson  to  a  government  aviation  station.  From 
there  an  experienced  airman  took  him  on  a  flying  journey 
over  Manhattan  Island,  and  he  studied  every  detail  of 
the  mighty  city  from  the  air.  He  had  a  bird’s  eye  view 
of  New  York. 

America  has  many  men  and  women  who  have  but  a 
worm’s  eye  view  of  the  great  coming  City  of  God.  Nar¬ 
rowness,  provincialism,  ignorance,  must  be  met  by  high- 


THE  SONS  OF  BEATEN  OIL 


145 


minded  scholarship  with  its  bird’s  eye  view  of  past, 
present,  and  future,  with  its  fine  idealism  and  with  the 
practical  patience  which  only  the  scholar  can  attain*  the 
patience  that  enables  him  to  “follow  the  gleam”  and  yet 
to  bide  his  time.  And  thus  it  is  his  to  become  the  link 
between  the  centuries,  to  bind  up  the  past,  present,  and 
future  in  one  great  constructive  whole.  And  when  the 
material  accomplishments  of  the  so-called  practical  life 
have  crumbled  to  the  dust,  still  the  scholar’s  vision  of 
truth,  expressed  in  deathless  forms  of  precision  and 
beauty,  abides  from  age  to  age. 

“Bright  is  the  ring  of  words 
When  the  right  man  rings  them. 

Fair  the  fall  of  songs 
When  the  singer  sings  them. 

Still  they  are  carolled  and  said — 

On  wings  they  are  carried — 

After  the  singer  is  dead 
And  the  maker  buried.” 

I  have  been  making  my  plea  to  Christian  men  and  wom¬ 
en  for  the  scholarly  passion  and  ideals.  Permit  me  now 
to  plead  with  the  great  world  of  scholarship  on  behalf  of 
the  supreme  Teacher.  I  do  not  believe  the  libel  which 
declares  that  the  world  of  learned  men  is  anti-Christian. 
A  certain  professor  of  Bryn  Mawr  College  published,  a 
few  years  ago,  the  results  of  a  referendum  among  scien¬ 
tists  as  to  belief  in  a  personal  God  and  in  immortality. 
To  some  thinkers  the  announced  results  were  ominous. 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  question  regarding 
a  personal  God  was  one  which  involved  a  belief  not  only 
in  a  God  but  in  the  possibility  of  fellowship  with  Him, 
and  in  the  answer  to  prayer.  Even  on  so  rigorous  a  basis 


146 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


a  great  proportion  of  these  thinkers  proclaimed  their  ac¬ 
ceptance  of  such  a  God,  and  more  than  half  of  them,  as 
I  remember,  even  as  scientists,  declared  their  belief  in 
personal  immortality.  But  in  addition,  one  must  bear  in 
mind  the  fact  that  what  these  men  might  refuse  to  testify 
as  scientists,  they  do  believe  as  men.  For  many  men 
quite  foolishly  separate  between  their  scientific  beliefs  and 
their  Christian  faiths.  And  I  make  bold  to  say  that  many 
men  who  would  refuse  as  scientists  to  attest  any  scientific 
belief  in  God  and  immortality,  do  practically  accept  both. 
There  is  one  further  consideration.  The  question  of 
whether  a  man  is  a  believer  is  one  which  would  have 
different  answers  in  different  times  and  moods.  Many  a 
thinker  who  might,  both  as  a  scientist  and  as  a  man, 
proclaim  agnosticism  in  his  laboratory  or  his  study,  will 
when  confronted  by  the  grim  tragedies  of  life  in  his  home 
turn  to  God  as  the  flowers  turn  to  the  sun.  In  a  word, 
it  is  my  deep  and  growing  conviction  that  there  is  far 
more  religious  belief  in  the  world  of  great  scholars  and 
even  of  eminent  physical  scientists  than  the  average  man 
realizes.  We  can  help  the  scholar  by  patience  with  him. 
Sometimes  he  is  grappling  with  problems  of  which  we  do 
not  even  dream.  But  we  can  help  him  most  of  all  by 
pointing  out  to  him  the  rule  of  Jesus,  “Except  ye  turn, 
and  become  as  little  children,  ye  shall  in  no  wise  enter 
into  the  kingdom  of  heaven.”  The  childlike  mind  is  the 
door  into  truth  which  abstract  reason  can  never  open.  I 
have  long  since  given  over  the  dream  of  great  scholar¬ 
ship,  because  of  the  insistent  demands  which  life  has 
made  upon  me  in  the  direction  of  practical  service.  It  is 
mine,  like  Moses  of  old,  to  stand  on  the  top  of  Pisgah 
and  look  across  into  the  promised  land  and  see  hosts  of 


THE  SONS  OF  BEATEN  OIL 


147 


young  men  and  young  women  passing  over  into  that  delect¬ 
able  country  on  which  I  shall  never  set  my  feet.  As  you 
march  on  into  the  promised  land  of  learning,  remember 
that  the  greatest  minds  which  the  world  has  ever  pro¬ 
duced  have  bowed  with  the  simplicity  of  little  children 
before  the  Cross  of  Christ.  And  if  ever  the  sheer  love 
of  learning  for  its  own  sake,  or  the  pride  of  opinion,  or 
the  perplexity  of  any  criss-cross  tracks  of  thought,  sweep 
you  far  out  from  this  supreme  center  for  all  constructive 
thinking,  then  my  appeal  to  you  is  voiced  in  that  poem 
of  Alfred  Noyes  which  he  calls  ‘‘The  Old  Skeptic/’ 

“I  am  weary  of  disbelieving :  why  should  I  wound  my  love 

To  pleasure  a  sophist’s  pride  in  a  graven  image  of  truth? 

I  will  go  back  to  my  home,  with  the  clouds  and  the  stars 
above, 

And  the  heaven  I  used  to  know,  and  the  God  of  my  buried 
youth. 


V 

I  will  go  back  to  the  home  where  of  old  in  my  boyish 
pride 

I  pierced  my  father’s  heart  with  a  murmur  of  unbelief. 

He  only  looked  in  my  face  as  I  spoke,  but  his  mute  eyes 
cried 

Night  after  night  in  my  dreams ;  and  he  died  in  grief,  in 
grief. 


Books?  I  have  read  the  books,  the  books  that  we  write 
ourselves, 

Extolling  our  love  of  an  abstract  truth  and  our  pride  of 
debate : 

I  will  go  back  to  the  love  of  the  cotter  who  sings  as  he 
delves, 

To  that  childish  infinite  love  and  the  God  above  fact  and 
date. 


148 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


To  that  ignorant  infinite  God  who  colours  the  meaningless 
flowers, 

To  that  lawless  infinite  Poet  who  crowns  the  law  with  the 
crime ; 

To  the  Weaver  who  covers  the  world  with  a  garment  of 
wonderful  hours, 

And  holds  in  His  hand  like  threads  the  tales  and  the  truths 
of  time. 


I  will  go  back  to  my  home  and  look  at  the  wayside  flowers, 

And  hear  from  the  wayside  cabins  the  kind  old  hymns 
again, 

Where  Christ  held  out  His  arms  in  the  quiet  evening 
hours, 

And  the  light  of  the  chapel  porches  broods  on  the  peace¬ 
ful  lane. 

And  there  I  shall  hear  men  praying  the  deep  old  foolish 
prayers, 

And  there  I  shall  see,  once  more,  the  fond  old  faith  con¬ 
fessed, 

And  the  strange  old  light  on  their  faces  who  hear  as  a 
blind  man  hears, — 

Come  unto  Me,  ye  weary,  and  I  will  give  you  rest. 

I  will  go  back  and  believe  in  the  deep  old  foolish  tales, 

And  pray  the  simple  prayers  that  I  learned  at  my  mother’s 
knee, 

Where  the  Sabbath  tolls  its  peace  thro’  the  breathless 
mountain-vales, 

And  the  sunset’s  evening  hymn  hallows  the  listening  sea.” 


XI 


THE  BITTER  CRY  OF  THE  WAR  WEARY 

Text:  Then  Abner  called  to  Joab,  and  said,  Shall  the  sword 
devour  for  ever?  Knowest  thou  not  that  it  will  be  bitter¬ 
ness  in  the  latter  end?  how  long  shall  it  be  then,  ere  thou 
bid  the  people  return  from  following  their  brethren? 

— II  Samuel  2 :26 

Here  is  a  cross  section  of  human  history  as  vivid  as 
the  morning  headlines.  Rival  claimants  for  a  dead  man's 
throne,  fighting  champions  of  each,  cruelty  and  craft, 
blind  hatred  and  equally  blind  loyalty,  stark  brutality  tem¬ 
pered  by  occasional  flashes  of  chivalry — this  is  the  tale 
of  a  thousand  wars  in  many  lands,  a  story  pictured  with 
uncanny  precision,  colored  with  unsurpassed  fidelity. 

In  these  words  of  Abner,  however,  we  catch  a  trumpet 
note  which  lifts  the  whole  scene  from  the  sordid  com¬ 
monplace  of  a  hundred  battlefields  to  the  dignity  of  a 
milestone  on  the  highway  of  the  Prince  of  Peace.  An 
instinctive  longing  for  a  better  day  relieves  the  moment 
of  deepest  tragedy.  Under  the  “blood-red  blossom  of 
war  with  a  heart  of  fire”  we  catch  a  glimpse,  if  ever  so 
tiny,  of  the  new,  sweet-scented  white  flower  of  peace. 
Hard,  brutal,  desperate  men  are  these,  but  from  the  lips 
of  the  one  come  words  of  deathless  passion,  of  pathetic 
beauty,  of  hope  springing  up  from  the  very  ashes  of  de¬ 
spair.  And  the  heart  of  the  other  leaps  up  to  them,  even 
as  the  hearts  of  men  must  leap  up  to  them  today.  For  they 


149 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


150 

show  that  the  hardest  fighting  man  is  never  wholly 
brutal;  they  ring  with  passionate  revolt  against  an  intol¬ 
erable  business;  they  assure  us  that  the  yearning  for 
permanent  peace  can  never  be  smothered  even  in  the 
blood  of  the  bitterest  conflict. 

“Not  wholly  lost,  O  Father!  is  this  evil  world  of  ours; 

Upward,  through  its  blood  and  ashes,  spring  afresh  the 
Eden  flowers ; 

From  its  smoking  hell  of  battle,  Love  and  Pity  send  their 
prayer 

And  still  thy  white-winged  angels  hover  dimly  in  our 
air !” 

Listen  to  the  bitter  cry  of  the  war  weary  in  every  age 
and  time!  “Shall  the  sword  devour  forever?  Knowest 
thou  not  that  it  will  be  bitterness  in  the  latter  end?  how 
long  shall  it  be  then,  ere  thou  bid  the  people  return  from 
following  their  brethren?” 

The  man  is  dull  indeed  whose  blood  does  not  run  a 
little  more  quickly  under  the  touch  of  these  dramatic 
words.  And  they  are  dramatic  because  they  are  at  once 
so  simple  and  so  universal.  This  hard,  bloody  man  Ab¬ 
ner,  the  product  of  a  hard,  bloody  age,  had  still  within 
him  the  heart  of  a  poet.  He  has  voiced  the  instincts  of 
a  sickened  and  disillusioned  world  today;  he  has  become 
a  mouthpiece  for  millions  of  brave  men  who  are  not 
afraid  to  fight  or  to  die  if  it  be  necessary,  but  whose  very 
souls  are  in  revolt  against  the  unrelieved  waste  and  un¬ 
recompensed  destruction  wrought  by  war — against  its 
utter  and  absolute  futility — and  in  whose  minds  there  is 
the  growing  conviction,  born  of  desperation,  that  civiliza¬ 
tion  must  find  some  way  to  end  war  speedily  or  that  war 
will  end  civilization,  and  that,  too,  speedily. 


THE  BITTER  CRY  OF  THE  WAR  WEARY  151 


With  what  terrible  fidelity  this  cry  of  Abner’s  ex¬ 
presses  the  sheer  destruction,  the  unredeemable  waste  of 
war!  “Shall  the  sword  devour  forever?”  How  apt  and 
final  the  expression !  The  sword  produces  nothing.  It 
devours  everything.  Men  are  questioning  more  and  more 
whether  there  is  any  constructive  outcome,  even  of  wars 
which  we  have  counted  justifiable  and  necessary,  which 
could  not  have  been  achieved  without  them.  So  far  as 
its  direct  results  are  concerned,  it  is  a  devouring  monster 
in  whose  hideous  maw  whole  nations  and  civilizations 
have  been  swallowed  up  almost  without  a  trace.  In  terms 
of  biology,  it  means  the  survival  of  the  unfit.  It  necessi¬ 
tates  the  reverse  breeding  of  the  race. 

All  the  great  dominant  nations,  the  big  military  powers, 
have  decayed  and  fallen.  Why?  Because  long  series  of 
devastating  wars  have  selected  the  best  young  manhood 
and  marked  it  for  early  slaughter,  long  before  it  pro¬ 
duced  offspring.  By  the  same  process,  war  culled  out  the 
unfit,  the  weak,  the  sickly,  the  tainted,  the  degenerate, 
the  morons,  and  made  of  them  the  fathers  of  the  next 
generation.  There  was  the  downfall  of  Assyria,  of 
Macedonia,  of  Rome,  and  of  Spain.  And  all  the  militarist 
peoples  today  may  profit  by  their  example.  Every  anthro¬ 
pologist  and  every  stock-raiser  knows  that  this  method, 
applied  to  flocks  and  herds,  would  result  in  a  speedy  ata¬ 
vism,  a  reversion  to  the  wild  breeds  of  barbarism. 

So  the  indictment  against  war  is  not  only  in  its  material 
waste.  It  is  not  only  in  burned  libraries  and  ruined 
works  of  art  and  desecrated  cathedrals  and  flooded  coal 
mines  and  decimated  forests  and  wrecked  cities,  and  the 
terrific  waste  of  building  materials  converted  from  con¬ 
structive  to  destructive  purposes,  and  the  million  million 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


152 

tons  of  coal  lost  forever  to  industry  and  commerce.  This 
is  the  slightest  and  most  inconsequential  element  of 
waste.  We  have  begun  to  fathom  the  real  loss  only  when 
we  consider  the  spilled  life-blood  of  civilization. 

This  destruction  of  the  fit  and  survival  of  the  unfit  has 
always  been  true  under  the  old  hit-and-miss  methods  of 
military  enlistment.  Today,  as  Mr.  Will  Irwin  has  point¬ 
ed  out,  all  the  great  nations,  including  our  own,  use 
conscription.  We  are  compelled  to  do  so  because  in  war 
for  the  time  being  everything  must  bend  to  the  one  grim 
purpose  of  winning,  and  experience  has  taught  us  that 
this  purpose  is  best  subserved  through  conscription. 
Now  this  means  that  with  scrupulous  care  and  an  abso¬ 
lutely  scientific  accuracy  each  nation  singles  out  for  de¬ 
struction  the  flower  of  its  manhood,  before  that  manhood 
has  reproduced  itself  in  the  next  generation.  In  the 
Civil  War,  God  help  us,  we  used  beardless  lads.  It  is 
said  that,  practically  speaking,  the  battle  of  Gettysburg 
was  fought  and  won  by  high  school  boys.  I  have  been 
told  that,  when  the  Civil  War  closed,  there  were  under 
arms  more  than  a  million  soldiers  aged  eighteen  or 
younger.  Some  advancement  has  been  made  in  this 
respect,  at  least  in  our  own  country.  But  beginning,  let 
us  say,  with  the  age  of  twenty-one,  we  shall  find  that  up 
to  the  age  of  forty-five  the  percentage  of  mortality  is  like 
a  pyramid.  The  first  in  arms,  the  first  in  action,  the 
hardiest  men  for  shock  troop  divisions,  are  in  the  athletic 
age  from  twenty-one  to  twenty-five.  First  in  arms  and 
always  first  in  the  death  lists.  And  pitifully  few  have 
left  even  one  child  behind  them.  Here  is  the  heaviest 
loss,  and  from  this  it  shades  ofif  with  a  lower  percentage 
from  twenty-five  to  thirty,  lower  still  from  thirty  to  forty, 


THE  BITTER  CRY  OF  THE  WAR  WEARY  153 


and  from  the  age  of  forty  to  forty-eight  the  losses  be¬ 
come  almost  negligible. 

Now  what  is  the  biological  significance  of  this?  Why, 
the  surviving  men  are  those  who  had  already  become  fath¬ 
ers.  The  men  who  fall  are  lost  to  the  race.  Mr.  Irwin 
asserts  that  in  France,  of  the  million  and  three  quarters 
who  were  killed,  sixty  per  cent  were  between  the  ages  of 
nineteen  and  thirty-one.  And  these  regal  men,  the  best 
manhood  of  France,  left  behind  them  on  the  average  not 
one  child  to  a  man.  Germany  lost  two  million  in  about  the 
same  proportion.  Thus  far,  war  has  spared  the  woman 
and  has  allowed  her  to  maintain  the  biological  standards  of 
the  race.  The  next  war  will  change  all  that.  The  fittest 
women  physically  and  mentally  will  have  more  and  more 
a  place  of  service  in  military  operations.  Not  on  the 
front  line,  perhaps,  but  increasingly  serving  in  posts  of 
real  danger.  And  we  shall  see  that  in  the  next  war,  if 
it  should  ever  come,  there  will  be  no  front  line.  Some¬ 
one  has  said  that  when  a  battle  endangers  the  crockery 
of  the  diplomats  as  much  as  it  endangers  the  lives  of  the 
front  line  fighters,  these  same  diplomats  will  find  a  way 
of  ending  it.  There  may  be  a  gleam  of  hope  here,  for 
in  the  next  war  there  will  be  no  front  line,  and  the  home 
of  the  statesman  who  brought  the  war  on  is  likely  to 
share,  with  the  trench  of  the  doughboy  who  has  to  fight 
it,  in  a  common  danger,  perhaps  in  the  end  “in  one  red 
burial  blent.” 

“Oh,  fool,  and  how  should  we  know 
What  it  is  all  about? 

Go  to  the  men  that  sowed  the  crop, 

We  only  threshed  it  out. 


154 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


Wordy  statesmen  sowed  the  crop, 

And  ’fore  God  it  yielded  mightily, 

As  row  on  row  of  stalwart  men 

Swung  wide  in  their  swaths  full  doughtily; 

On  row,  on  row,  of  human  chaff, 

With  here  and  there  the  grain; 

And  Peter  stood  at  heaven’s  gate, 

Sifting  the  souls  of  the  slain.” 

Now  what  is  the  outcome  of  all  this?  Vernon  Kellogg 
tells  us  that  the  French  records  in  the  generation  after 
the  Napoleonic  wars  show  that  France  had  to  lower  her 
standards  of  height,  weight,  and  physical  fitness  for  her 
recruits.  Why  ?  Because  the  unfit  had  survived  and 
the  fit  had  perished.  I  remember  how,  many  years  ago, 
Dr.  McDonald  of  the  Toronto  Globe  pointed  out  that  the 
physical  standards  of  the  Scotch  Highland  regiments  have 
been  steadily  lowering  from  generation  to  generation. 
Why?  Because  the  unfit  have  survived  and  the  fit  have 
perished.  I  went  recently  from  place  to  place  in  the  dear 
land  of  my  fathers,  and  as  I  stood  in  her  majestic  church¬ 
es  and  cathedrals  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  muster  roll 
of  her  best  manhood  could  be  called  from  the  memorial 
tablets  that  covered  their  walls !  How  tragically  mo¬ 
notonous  grew  the  inscriptions — “Killed  in  Egypt”, 
“Killed  in  the  Sudan”,  “Killed  in  India”,  “Killed  in 
South  Africa”,  “Killed  in  Turkey”,  “Killed  on  the  Con¬ 
tinent” — until  the  heart  sickened  and  the  imagination 
faltered  at  the  sheer  pity  of  it  all.  Scotland’s  boys,  her 
brave,  high-minded,  brainy  boys,  slain  all  around  the 
world;  and  I  understood  what  Lowell  meant  when  he  saw 
the  high  school  lads  marching  to  their  doom  in  the  Civil 
War: 


THE  BITTER  CRY  OF  THE  WAR  WEARY  155 

“  ’Tain’t  right  to  hev  the  young  go  fust, 

All  throbbin’  full  o’  gifts  an’  graces, 

Leavin’  life’s  paupers  dry  ez  dust 

To  try  an’  make  b’lieve  fill  their  places ! 

Nothin’  but  tells  us  wut  we  miss, 

Ther’  's  gaps  our  lives  can’t  never  fay  in 
An’  thet  world  seems  so  fur  from  this 
Lef’  for  us  loafers  to  grow  gray  in !” 

So  far  the  grim  lesson  of  the  past.  What  of  prognosis 
for  the  days  to  come?  The  contrast  between  that  which 
has  been  and  that  which  is  to  be  may  well  be  expressed 
by  the  difference  between  retail  and  wholesale  slaughter. 
And  the  future  battle  implies  not  only  the  wholesale  kill¬ 
ing  of  combatants,  but  of  non-combatants  as  well.  There 
will  be  literally  “no  discharge  in  that  war.”  I  remember 
very  well  how  in  the  early  days  of  our  entrance  into  the 
world  conflict  a  certain  business  man  complained  bitterly 
to  me  about  the  administration’s  attitude  on  poison  gas. 
He  had  gone  down  to  Washington  on  that  matter,  and  our 
Government  had  refused  to  touch  it,  to  his  great  disgust. 
But  later  the  United  States  Government  was  compelled 
to  take  up  poison  gas  for  the  simple  reason  that  the 
enemy  was  using  it,  a  reason  that  will  always  prove 
conclusive  in  the  midst  of  a  campaign,  no  matter  what 
paper  agreements  were  signed  in  times  of  peace.  In  war 
the  rule  of  the  worst  becomes  the  law  of  the  whole.  And 
the  United  States  Government,  which  at  first  had  been 
too  humane  for  poison  gas,  went  into  the  nasty  business 
with  unsurpassed  thoroughness  and  businesslike  ef¬ 
ficiency.  I  remember  how  my  late  friend,  Dr.  Gunsaulus, 
told  me  of  gases  developed  in  the  laboratories  of  Armour 
Institute,  with  many  times  the  destructive  efficiency  of 
anything  used  in  the  war.  Had  the  conflict  continued 


156 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


another  six  months,  we  should  have  been  ready  with 
Lewisite  gas.  It  is  invisible  and  hence  incapable  of  de¬ 
tection  in  advance.  It  is  heavier  than  air,  sinking  into 
the  dugouts  so  that  none  can  escape  by  burrowing  into 
the  ground.  Its  deadly  poison  kills  by  contact  with  the 
body,  as  well  as  by  inhalation.  It  is  fifty-five  times 
greater  in  area  of  radiation  than  anything  used  in  our 
campaign.  Twelve  bombs  of  it  would  have  eliminated 
Berlin  from  the  map. 

With  radio-guided  airplanes  set  by  machinery  to  dis¬ 
charge  bombs  at  a  given  point  without  the  use  of  a  pilot, 
we  shall  have  guns  of  practically  unlimited  range — guns, 
let  us  say,  of  the  range  of  Europe.  And  the  enemy  will 
have  something  like  it  too.  General  Mitchell  has  pointed 
out  how  two  hundred  tons  of  phosgene  gas  laid  thus  on 
the  city  of  New  York  would  turn  it  overnight  into  a 
shambles,  making  a  necropolis  out  of  our  metropolis.  In 
the  last  war  thirty  millions  died  directly  or  indirectly; 
but  that  was  only  retail  war.  The  next  will  be  wholesale. 
The  German  Government  almost  wrecked  civilization  by 
her  submarine  campaign,  and  it  is  testified  that  never  at 
any  time  did  she  have  more  than  twenty-five  of  these  little 
engines  of  undersea  destruction  at  work !  In  the  next 
war  we  shall  see  twenty-five  hundred  at  work.  We  were 
just  learning  about  tanks  when  Armistice  Day  came. 
This  particular  branch  of  wholesale  killing  will  be  devel¬ 
oped  along  with  the  rest.  And  as  though  this  were  not 
enough,  the  killing  ray  and  disease  germs  are  coming  to 
the  front*  as  possibilities  in  the  grim  art  of  wholesale 
human  destruction.  Surely  this  ghastly  menace  which 
hangs  over  us  might  use  the  words  of  the  Veiled  Prophet 
in  Moore’s  tragic  poem : 


THE  BITTER  CRY  OF  THE  WAR  WEARY  157 


“Here — judge  if  hell,  with  all  its  power  to  damn, 

Can  add  one  curse  to  the  foul  thing  I  am!” 

The  second  aspect  of  the  matter  is  the  irresistible 
feeling  in  the  minds  of  all  thoughtful  men  that  the  whole 
business  is  not  only  uncalculable  waste,  but  sheer  blind 
stupidity  and  utter  futility.  This,  too,  has  been  expressed 
in  the  cry  of  Abner.  “Knowest  thou  not  that  it  will  be 
bitterness  in  the  latter  end?”  Yes,  bitterness  in  the  lat¬ 
ter  end.  It  gets  nowhere.  One  might  risk  the  waste  of 
blood  and  treasure  if  there  were  compensating  advantage 
in  the  denouement.  We  thought,  some  of  us,  in  our 
blindness,  that  there  would  be  spiritual  compensations. 
We  thought  that  war  would  somehow  ennoble  the  char¬ 
acters  and  refine  the  spiritual  perceptions  of  its  partici¬ 
pants.  Never  was  a  more  pitiful  illusion  shattered  so 
completely.  There  was  a  time  when  individual  combat 
might  develop  chivalry.  The  wholesale  killing  of  men 
by  machinery  and  chemistry  has  ended  all  that.  The  men 
who  came  back  strong  and  fine  and  clean  were  not  made 
so  by  war.  They  came  back  that  way  because,  thank 
God,  they  were  strong  and  fine  and  clean  enough  to 
withstand  what  the  brutal  trenches  tried  to  do  to  them. 

But  we  dreamed  that  no  matter  what  the  war  might 
do  to  men  individually,  it  was  at  least  a  war  to  end  war. 
I  was  one  of  those  who  held  from  the  beginning  of  the 
conflict  that  we  must  join  it.  It  seemed  to  me  that  the 
central  empires  were  the  supreme  citadels  of  militarism, 
and  that  they  must  be  beaten  before  militarism  could  be 
wiped  out.  I  felt  that  it  must  be  fought  out  if  only  to 
show  that  they  who  take  the  sword  must  perish  by  the 
sword. 

Yet  none  of  us  are  now  foolish  enough  to  believe  that 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


158 

this  was  a  war  to  end  war.  On  the  contrary,  the  “next 
war”  is  on  all  men’s  lips  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlan¬ 
tic.  Europe  finds  herself  in  the  same  old  vicious  circle. 
The  things  which  the  defeat  of  Germany  seemed  to  settle 
remain  unsettled.  Men  say,  “The  war  ended  too  soon ; 
we  should  have  marched  into  Berlin  and  dictated  terms 
of  peace.”  But  suppose  we  had  marched  into  Berlin. 
We  could  not  have  stayed  there  always,  and  the  moment 
the  allied  armies  came  out  they  would  have  had  to  reckon 
with  the  bitter  hatreds  and  grim  determination  for  re¬ 
venge  which  has  always  followed  the  signal  humbling  of 
a  strong  nation  by  such  a  campaign.  Germany  marched 
to  Paris  in  1871.  But  even  Germany  could  not  stay 
there,  and  when  she  came  out  she  sowed  the  dragon’s 
teeth  all  along  her  trail.  Force  settles  nothing  perma¬ 
nently.  Only  justice  and  agreements  framed  in  common 
councils  can  do  that.  Jesus  laid  down  that  great  law, 
and  He  knew  what  he  was  talking  about.  Christian  men 
whose  only  solution  of  our  present  situation  is  to  “treat 
Germany  rough”  have  not  the  faintest  glimmering  of 
what  the  New  Testament  really  means ! 

No  country  except  France  suffered  more  terribly  than 
did  England.  And  nowhere  is  there  a  more  bitter  dis¬ 
illusionment  about  the  result  of  war  than  in  the  British 
Empire.  I  heard  Dr.  Norwood  in  the  London  City  Tem¬ 
ple,  speaking  officially  on  behalf  of  the  British  Non-Con* 
formist  Ministry,  say  in  substance  that  for  Great  Britain 
her  victory  over  Germany  was  only  a  slight  shade  less 
disastrous  than  would  have  been  Germany’s  victory  over 
Great  Britain.  And  when  one  studied  the  faces  of  that 
vast  audience,  representing  homes  saddened  by  irrepar¬ 
able  losses,  he  could  not  read  a  single  sign  of  disapproval 


THE  BITTER  CRY  OF  THE  WAR  WEARY  159 


in  the  face  of  this  amazing  statement.  The  LIoyd-George 
ministry  that  wintered  so  many  storms  fell  partly  through 
the  sheer  war- weariness  of  a  disillusioned  people.  La¬ 
bor  balked  and  sent  word  to  the  Prime  Minister:  “The 
whole  Dardanelles  are  not  worth  one  British  soldier.” 

And  then  along  with  disillusionment  as  to  the  results 
of  war  come  misgivings,  sad  misgivings,  as  to  what  might 
have  been.  When  that  tragic  midsummer  madness  fell 
upon  the  world  in  July  of  1914,  there  was  no  machinery 
for  quick  international  conference.  Bear  in  mind  that  the 
first  Hague  Conference  came  after  nine  months  of  prep¬ 
aration,  and  the  second  after  two  years  of  preliminary 
work.  The  recent  Washington  Arms  Conference  required 
four  months  in  the  way  of  preparatory  service.  In  the 
rapidly  hurrying  events  of  that  terrible  time  there  was  no 
opportunity  for  the  statesmen  involved  to  get  together. 
There  was  no  conference  machinery.  When  not  long  ago 
the  soldiers  of  Jugo-Slavia  crossed  the  border  line  into 
Albania,  and  an  international  menace  developed,  it  took 
the  League  of  Nations  just  nine  days  to  get  a  conference 
at  work  on  the  subject.  Set  aside  all  argument  as  to  the 
merits  of  the  League  of  Nations.  But  if  we  had  had  at 
least  some  machinery  at  hand  by  which  the  various  pow¬ 
ers  involved  could  have  been  seated  around  a  table  before 
the  catastrophe,  even  as  they  were  compelled  to  sit  around 
a  table  afterwards,  the  catastrophe  itself  might  never  have 
happened.  We  dare  not  dwell  on  this.  “That  way  mad¬ 
ness  lies  !  Let  me  shun  that !”  One  scarcely  dares  to  con¬ 
template  the  fact  that  Earl  Grey,  with  his  back  to  the  wall, 
through  those  terrible  two  weeks  was  without  an  oppor¬ 
tunity  even  to  meet  the  men  on  whose  decision  rested  the 
fate  of  the  world;  and  as  Raymond  Fosdick  points  out. 


i6o 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


on  the  basis  of  a  handful  of  telegrams  translated  from 
one  language  to  another,  hurriedly  written  and  inadequate¬ 
ly  -translated,  the  supreme  horror  of  world  history  was 
consummated.  Pitifully  unavailing  are  our  useless  re¬ 
grets,  but  if  such  an  emergency  comes  again  and  we  are 
no  better  prepared  with  the  machinery  of  conference, 
then  every  man  who,  from  blind  partisanship  or  personal 
hatreds  or  narrow  nationalistic  selfishness,  has  blocked  the 
path  of  a  world  organization  for  peace,  must  stand  before 
the  bar  of  his  own  conscience  and  cry  with  Macbeth : 

“Will  all  great  Neptune’s  ocean  wash  this  blood 
Clean  from  my  hand?  No;  this  my  hand  will  rather 
The  multitudinous  seas  incarnadine, 

Making  the  green  one  red.” 

The  cry  of  Abner  has,  however,  a  third  aspect.  There 
is  in  it  an  instinctive  longing  reaching  out  toward  a  great 
certainty  that  there  must  be  some  better  way.  “How  long 
shall  it  be  ere  thou  bid  the  people  return  from  following 
their  brethren  ?”  The  heart  of  the  man  will  not  rest  until 
it  has  leaped  forward  toward  a  better  day  when  men  will 
not  follow  their  brethren  for  purposes  of  destruction. 
Yes,  the  very  heart  of  the  matter  is  found  in  the  fact 
that  these  hostile  camps  were  brethren,  if  they  only  knew 
and  realized  it. 

It  is  considered  as  unlikely  that  civilization  can  ever  en¬ 
dure  on  the  basis  of  Tolstoy’s  non-resistance  doctrine. 
Personally  I  do  not  accept  that  interpretation  of  the  words 
of  Jesus  which  teaches  an  absolute  and  unqualified  non- 
resistance.  If  a  bandit  attempted  to  take  the  life  of  a 
little  girl,  non-resistance  might  kill  the  girl  by  sparing 
the  bandit.  We  have  arrived  at  a  state  of  society  where 
force  is  no  longer  the  law  by  which  individual  differences 


THE  BITTER  CRY  OF  THE  WAR  WEARY  161 


are  settled.  The  code  duello  has  been  abrogated,  at  least 
on  this  side  of  the  water.  But  civilization  does  still  use 
force  against  the  outlaw,  as  in  the  case  of  the  policeman 
who  conquers  the  bandit  and  saves  the  girl.  And  we  must 
come  to  this  status  among  nations.  Force  must  no  longer 
be  the  means  of  settlement  of  differences  between  nations 
under  law.  Its  only  justifiable  use  is  by  nations  collec¬ 
tively  against  the  outlaw.  In  some  way  the  world  must 
organize  for  peace  and  bring  to  bear  on  the  outlaw  first 
the  force  of  world  sentiment,  and  then  the  force  of  eco¬ 
nomic  boycott,  with  the  use  of  collective  police  powers 
only  as  a  last  resort.  I  am  profoundly  convinced  that  the 
first  two  forces  would  in  most  cases  prove  sufficient.  I 
care  not  under  what  form  the  nations  band  together,  nor 
what  name  is  used,  nor  whose  glory  will  be  heightened  or 
lessened,  nor  which  party  may  gain  advantage.  In  one 
way  or  another  the  world  must  organize  for  peace,  or 
civilization  is  doomed. 

I  am  persuaded,  too,  that  this  world  problem  can  be 
worked  out  only  on  the  basis  of  friendly  understanding 
and  cooperation  between  the  two  branches  of  the  great 
Anglo-Saxon  peoples.  Such  an  understanding  is  abso¬ 
lutely  essential,  and  every  Christian  man  should  resist 
with  all  his  powers  of  heart  and  hand  those  on  either  side 
of  the  water  who  would  make  political  gain  by  stirring 
up  strife  between  the  two  great  English-speaking  nations. 
It  is  said  that  Robert  Browning,  scrupulously  careful  of 
all  social  forms,  was  once  late  at  a  formal  dinner.  Apolo¬ 
gizing  to  his  hostess,  he  remarked  that  he  had  taken  time 
to  go  to  his  club  and  blackball  an  English  editor  who  was 
trying  to  make  trouble  between  England  and  America. 
Would  God  we  had  more  Brownings  on  both  sides  of  the 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


162 

water !  For  in  the  very  nature  of  things  a  permanent 
policy  of  isolation  is  neither  justified  nor  possible  in  Amer¬ 
ica.  Without  us  Europe  is  helpless  and  hopeless.  And 
we  are  not  to  imagine  that  the  failure  of  Europe  will  leave 
us  unscathed.  It  will  not  do  for  this  powerful,  wealthy 
and  nominally  Christian  country  to  keep  hands  off  while 
war  ravages  the  ancient  Christian  lands  of  the  Near  East, 
and  then  pass  the  hat  to  take  a  poor,  pitiful  collection  in 
the  interests  of  the  remaining  widows  and  orphans  who 
have  survived  the  catastrophe.  The  Christianity  of  Amer¬ 
ica  must  be  international  as  well  as  individual. 

Dr.  Jowett  has  stirred  the  heart  of  the  English-speaking 
world  by  his  challenge :  “What  has  the  Church  of  Christ 
to  say?”  We  must  answer  that  challenge  or  allow  His 
enemies  to  place  the  crown  of  thorns  once  more  upon  the 
sacred  head  of  our  Lord.  Shall  the  Church  of  Christ,  in- 
the  face  of  such  a  summons,  remain  dumb  and  impotent 
and  cringing  and  apologetic?  What  of  the  world  organ¬ 
ized  for  peace?  It  was  the  dear  dream  of  Jesus,  the  pas¬ 
sion  of  His  life.  Shall  we  allow  it  to  remain  as  the  foot¬ 
ball  of  selfish  politicians?  Shall  we  drift  along,  lulled 
to  indifference  by  the  politician’s  voice,  until  we  waken — 
too  late,  alas ! — with  the  ghastly  horror  upon  us  ?  It  will 
then  be  impossible  to  check  the  storm.  All  we  can  do 
will  be  to  serve  coffee  and  doughnuts  and  chewing  gum 
and  perhaps  cigarettes  to  our  boys  as  they  march  to  the 
shambles.  Is  the  Church  not  big  enough  for  something 
more  than  this?  Says  Sir  Robertson  Nicol:  “If  the 
Churches  of  Christ  throughout  Europe  and  America  allow 
this  to  happen  they  had  better  close  their  doors.  For  the 
next  war,  if  ever  it  comes,  will  be  a  war  on  civilization  it¬ 
self.”  The  recent  Prime  Minister  of  England,  addressing 


THE  BITTER  CRY  OF  THE  WAR  WEARY  163 


the  Nonconformist  clergy  last  fall,  cried  passionately,  “I 
speak  as  one  who  has  had  something  to  do  with  war,  and 
who  has  had  to  make  a  close  study  of  it — and  a  close 
study  of  peace.  During  the  war  the  cry  was,  ‘Never 
again !’  Watch !  There  is  a  growing  assumption  that  the 
conflict  is  coming  again,  sooner  or  later.  That  is  the 
business  of  the  Churches.”  After  the  Washington  Arms 
Conference  the  Japanese  Premier  said  to  Mr.  John  R. 
Mott,  “We  must  now  look  to  the  leaders  of  religion.” 

Leaders  of  Religion !  Eyes  front !  Look  you  to  our  great 
Leader.  Did  Christ’s  cradle  song  ring  out  over  Bethlehem 
in  vain?  The  Son  of  God  goes  forth  to  peace!. . .  .Who 
follows  in  His  train? 


XII 


THE  UPWARD  CALLING 

Text:  Friend,  go  up  higher. — Luke  14:10. 

These  words  of  Jesus  are  quite  obviously  spoken  in 
lighter  vein.  They  are  shrewd  satire  on  the  society  of  His 
time,  and  for  the  matter  of  that,  of  our  time.  There  is  a 
sardonic  undertone  in  them.  He  noted  the  same  human 
nature  that  today  causes  the  rush  for  the  best  seats.  He 
marked  how  they  “chose  out  the  chief  seats,”  with  a 
humorous  twist,  I  think,  which  must  have  neutralized  an 
impulse  to  acid  sarcasm.  Even  so,  one  cannot  fail  to  note 
the  satire.  “Sit  not  down  in  the  chief  seat,  lest  haply  a 
more  honorable  man  than  thou  be  bidden  of  him.,,  “Lest 
haply!”  Just  a  bare  possibility  that  someone  might  be 
found  of  more  importance  than  oneself !  A  remote  pos¬ 
sibility,  of  course,  and  yet  it  is  always  there.  “Then  shalt 
thou  have  glory  in  the  presence  of  all  that  sit  at  meat 
with  thee.”  For  a  man  who  held  all  social  ranks  and 
honors  and  eminences  in  utter  contempt,  this  could  be 
nothing  else  than  good-natured  raillery.  One  recalls 
Thackeray  poking  fun  at  the  foibles  of  Major  Pendennis, 
and  yet  doing  it  good-naturedly  because  he  loved  him. 
Yes,  these  words  might  have  a  place  as  a  lesson  in  humility 
to  the  little  children  in  the  beginners’  department. 

Yet  there  is  no  finer  illustration  in  the  New  Testament 
of  the  way  in  which  the  words  of  Jesus  have  such  utter 
simplicity  of  application  along  with  such  profundity  of 
implication.  If  He  speaks  in  lighter  vein,  the  vein  runs 

164 


THE  UPWARD  CALLING  165 

deep.  Here  as  always  in  the  Master's  wonderful  con¬ 
versations  the  smallest  and  most  inconsequential  sayings 
are  linked  up  with  the  most  transcendent  thinking.  His 
words  are  always  living  words,  with  the  universality  of 
life  itself.  They  play  about  us  in  lightness  and  airy  grace 
as  the  fountain  shimmers  in  the  sunlight,  but  ever  back  of 
them  is  the  cool  illimitable  depth  of  the  mountain  lake 
from  which  the  fountain  takes  its  source.  When  you 
come  to  drink  of  these  waters,  there  is  always  more  than 
spray.  There  are  shallows  for  the  little  child,  but  depths 
for  the  savant.  Carlyle  tells  us  of  Thor  who  on  one  of 
his  journeys  was  offered  a  drinking  horn.  In  vain  did  the 
mighty  god  strive  to  drain  it  dry.  By  and  by  he  found 
that  he  had  attempted  to  drink  up  the  ocean.  So  the  very 
table  toasts  of  Jesus  are  drunk  from  goblets  that  have  the 
capacity  of  the  illimitable  sea. 

Take,  if  you  will,  the  implication  of  these  words, 
“Friend,  go  up  higher."  What  is  it?  A  little  social  pro¬ 
motion?  A  company  phrase  for  a  banqueting  party?  A 
playful  observation  in  the  homes  of  the  old-rich  and  the 
new-rich  and  the  would-be-rich? 

Yes,  perhaps  all  this,  but  infinitely  more.  For  they  car¬ 
ry  us  back  to  a  fundamental  law  of  life.  From  the  day 
that  the  morning  stars  sang  together  until  the  cosmic 
twilight  when  the  utmost  stars  grow  dim,  this  divine  voice 
will  echo  to  the  farthest  reaches  of  the  universe : 
“Friend,  go  up  higher."  Paul  in  more  solemn  phrase  ex¬ 
presses  the  same  great  principle.  “I  press  on,"  he  says, 
“toward  the  goal  unto  the  prize  of  the  high  calling  of  God 
in  Christ  Jesus."  That  is  the  great  goal  toward  which  the 
whole  created  world  has  striven  from  the  beginning.  The 
upward  calling  of  God !  What  a  phrase ! 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


1 66 

That  was  the  voice  that  breathed  over  the  primeval 
star-mist  when  the  worlds  first  began  to  swing  out  in  their 
ordered  orbits  at  His  command  and  will. 

“Before  God  smote  the  dark  in  twain, 

Ere  yet  the  stars  saw  one  another  plain.” 

Up  from  chaos  and  old  night  to  order  and  the  reign 
of  law  —  “Up  higher,”  He  spoke,  and  it  was  so.  That 
whispered  but  irresistible  fiat  came  to  the  simple  cell- 
forms,  and  the  steady  upward  climb  of  life  began;  that 
colossal  epic  played  out  through  inconceivable  ranges  of 
time.  “Go  up  higher”  —  and  the  divine  urge  thrilling 
-  under  the  soil  drives  through  winter’s  frozen  desolation 
the  violet,  the  primrose  and  the  anemone  of  the  coming 
spring.  Obedient  to  His  command  they  push  their  tiny 
heads  out  into  the  upper  air  with  resistless  momentum. 
He  speaks,  and  millions  upon  millions  of  tiny  grass  blades 
stab  their  way  into  the  sunlight  from  every  meadow,  and 
the  stately  palm  and  cedar  and  pine  and  oak  thrust  their 
majestic  tops  toward  heaven  as  though  in  answer  to  that 
divine  summons  from  above.  You  remember  how  the 
lamented  Joyce  Kilmer  sang: 

“Poems  are  made  by  fools  like  me; 

But  only  God  can  make  a  tree.” 

Those  stately  trees  upon  our  campus  are  the  answer  to 
God’s  word,  “Go  up  higher”;  the  majestic  manifestation 
of  that  mysterious  life  force,  so  quiet  and  yet  so  tre¬ 
mendous,  and  the  upward  urge,  thrilling  through  all  its 
million  million  cells,  persists  into  the  beauty  of  blossom 
and  the  glory  of  fruitage.  Professor  Coulter  has  said 
that,  while  the  highlands  may  present  the  prostrate  types 
of  foliage-bearing  stems,  when  plant  life  springs  out  of 


THE  UPWARD  CALLING 


167 


the  lowlands  it  erects  foliage-bearing  stems  constantly 
more  numerous  and  more  lofty,  as  though  there  were  in 
the  very  soul  of  the  tree  an  insatiable  appetite  for  the 
upper  air  and  for  the  sunlight.  That  is  the  echo  of  God's 
voice,  “Go  up  higher.” 

“Every  clod  feels  a  stir  of  might, 

An  instinct  within  it  that  reaches  and  towers, 

And,  groping  blindly  above  it  for  light, 

Climbs  to  a  soul  in  grass  and  flowers.” 

And  then  the  voice  came  with  fresh  summons  to  more 
glorious  conquests.  Leibnitz,  the  great  philosopher,  pic¬ 
tured  the  world,  even  the  inorganic  world,  and  most 
especially  the  world  of  organic  matter,  as  though  in  it 
were  spirit  struggling  upward  out  of  dreamless  sleep  into 
a  dream  sleep,  and  then  out  of  dream  sleep  in  a  great 
awakening.  So  we  see  life  climb  its  way  from  organic  to 
sentient,  from  sentience  to  intelligence,  and  at  last,  by  a 
dizzy  leap,  to  self-consciousness,  to  the  crowning  creation 
of  the  whole  universe,  to  personality  aware  of  itself.  Up 
toward  that  goal  through  Neanderthal  type  and  Rhodesian 
type  and  Cromagnan  and  Paleolithic  and  Neolithic.  Here 
at  last  is  man,  the  crown  and  summit  of  creative  activity ; 
man,  whom  the  Greek  called  “ho  anthropos ”  the  “upward- 
looking  one” ;  man,  born  with  a  noble  discontent ;  man, 
the  one  animal  that  gazes  toward  the  stars ;  man,  who,  as 
Plato  said,  was  able  to  “contemplate  God.”  Though  his 
first  moral  decisions  involved  an  atavism  or  fall,  yet  even 
fallen  man  was  not  content  to  stay  in  the  mud.  Professor 
Paton  calls  our  attention  to  the  fact  that  “The  Paleolithic 
cave-dwellers  of  the  Quaternary  period  in  Belgium  and 
France  were  contemporary  with  the  mammoth,  the  cave- 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


1 68 

lion  and  the  cave-bear.  Their  skulls  show  that  they  were 
nearer  the  apes  than  any  existing  race  of  man.  They 
were  dressed  in  skins  and  armed  only  with  the  rudest  un¬ 
dressed  stone  implements ;  yet  they  placed  with  their  dead 
ornaments,  tools,  arms  and  food  for  use  in  the  other  life, 
and  celebrated  funeral  feasts  in  their  honor.”  The  same 
was  true  of  the  cave  dwellers  in  the  Neolithic  age.  In  his 
very  lowest  and  crudest  and  most  barbarous  forms,  man 
thrilling  with  the  love  of  immortality,  with  the  longing  for 
a  better  world  than  this,  building  more  stately  mansions 
for  his  soul  as  the  seasons  roll  by!  Mr.  Emerson  speaks 
of  two  men  who  spent  twenty-five  years  in  seeking  proofs 
of  personal  immortality.  And  he  adds  that  the  greatest 
proof  of  immortality  is  in  the  impetus  that  sustained  such 
an  endeavor.  That  impetus  has  been  in  the  breast  of 
humanity  from  the  very  beginning. 

And  then  what  dizzy  Alpine  slopes  greet  our  eyes  as  we 
view  that  steady  climb  through  history !  Out  of  low  mists 
into  the  mountain  air !  Out  of  slavery  and  polygamy  and 
protean  forms  of  bestiality  in  bodily  indulgence.  At 
length,  and  please  God  soon,  out  of  war !  Ah,  how  hard  a 
climb  it  is !  With  what  infinite  pangs  and  agony  of  strug¬ 
gle  do  we  learn  to 

“Arise  and  fly 

The  reeling  Faun,  the  sensual  feast; 

Move  upward,  working  out  the  beast 

And  let  the  ape  and  tiger  die.” 

At  last  the  high  peaks  begin  to  emerge  here  and  there. 
The  vision  of  Plato,  the  mind  of  Aristotle,  the  brain  of 
Shakespeare,  the  organ  soul  of  Milton,  the  great  heart  of 
Lincoln,  up  and  up  still,  to  where  we  catch  a  gleam  of  the 
white-clad  summit  incalculably,  immeasurably  above  the 


THE  UPWARD  CALLING 


169 


rest — the  height  on  which  Christ  stands !  Not  there  yet, 
but  toiling  on ;  and  when  the  years  pass  and  age  comes  to 
the  individual,  and  the  earthly  home  of  this  tabernacle  is 
dissolved,  still  the  human  spirit,  on  the  mountain  peaks  of 
time,  the  heir  of  all  the  ages,  defiant  of  death’s  veto,  gazes 
unafraid  up  to  vaster  heights  and  hears,  not  the  funeral 
bell  tolling  extinction,  but  one  clear  eternal  call,  “Friend, 
go  up  higher.” 

Now  the  thing  we  call  ambition  is  only  one  phase  of 
this  universal  upward  urge,  and  is  so  far  forth  a  divine 
thing — often  distorted  and  misused,  often  made  the  cloak 
of  selfishness  and  cruelty  and  tyranny — still  it  is  a  God¬ 
like  thing.  The  more  precious  the  coin,  the  more  probable 
the  counterfeit.  Improper  ambition  is  the  sin  by  which 
the  angels  fell,  because  proper  ambition  is  the  motive  by 
which  angels  rise.  When  unselfishly  interpreted  and 
applied  in  the  spirit  of  Christ  and  Paul,  it  is  but  the  in¬ 
evitable  movement  of  God’s  life  within  us.  The  man  or 
woman  who  has  no  ambition  for  something  higher  than 
the  present  status  has  little  advantage  over  the  beast  of 
the  field.  Without  such  ambition  you  have  a  dead,  grovel¬ 
ing  soul  which  could  take  as  its  own  the  words  of  Hamlet, 
“Oh,  I  could  be  bounded  in  a  nutshell,  and  count  myself 
a  king  of  infinite  space.”  The  desire  to  make  the  most  of 
oneself  for  God  and  humanity  is  one  of  the  holiest  im¬ 
pulses  which  can  come  into  an  immortal  soul.  That  old 
sickly  hymn,  “Oh,  to  be  nothing,  nothing,  Only  to  lie  at 
His  feet,”  is  not  a  Christian  hymn;  that  is  a  Buddhist 
hymn  in  praise  of  Nirvana. 

The  question  which  now  confronts  us  is  one  of  means 
and  methods.  How,  pray,  shall  we  go  up  higher? 
Whence  the  motive  power,  and  how  applied  ? 


170 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


Here  once  more  we  cannot  fail  to  note  the  uncanny 
accuracy  of  Christ’s  observation.  Two  methods  are  con¬ 
trasted  in  the  cases  of  two  men.  The  method  of  the  one 
man  was  this,  “Sit  in  the  highest  seat  till  called  down.” 
The  method  of  the  other  was  this,  “Sit  in  the  lowest  seat 
till  called  up.”  The  one  man  said,  “If  you  want  a  high 
place,  take  it.”  The  other  said,  “If  you  want  a  high  place, 
deserve  it.” 

It  is  after  all  the  moral  situation  of  the  temptation  scene 
in  the  Garden.  Satan  said,  “If  you  want  to  be  as  gods, 
reach  out  and  seize  the  prize.”  God  had  said,  “If  you 
want  to  be  as  gods,  deserve  and  obey,  and  earn  the  promo¬ 
tion  through  character.”  That  is  the  alternative  here. 
The  one  man  looked  to  the  environment  and  the  other  to 
the  inner  life;  the  one  to  getting  a  place  and  the  other  to 
getting  the  ability  to  fill  the  place. 

Now  there  was  a  time  when  biology  rang  the  changes 
on  environment,  sometimes  almost  exclusively.  But  since 
learning  that  acquired  characteristics  are  not  transmitted, 
the  stress  upon  environment  has  become  less  and  less. 
Says  a  recent  writer  on  anthropology :  “That  physical  en¬ 
vironment  is  not  to  be  disregarded  in  any  historic  study 
of  a  civilization  is  obvious  enough,  but  no  physical  environ¬ 
ment  can  in  itself  be  held  responsible  for  producing  a 
definite  type  of  civilization,  nor  can  any  environment, 
barring  extremes,  prevent  a  civilization  from  developing.” 
And  the  writer  goes  on  to  find  the  secret  of  changes  not  so 
much  in  the  outward  location  but  in  the  inward  life  of  the 
individual.  Well,  what  is  biologically  true  of  the  race  is 
practically  true  of  each  one  of  us.  It  is  not  the  place  we 
get  but  the  spirit  that  is  within  us  which  will  determine  our 


THE  UPWARD  CALLING 


171 

upward  progress.  It  is  not  pull  from  without,  but  push 
from  within.  Oh,  I  grant  you  pull  often  gets  a  good  deal, 
but  it  seldom  keeps  much.  It  may  secure  a  man  a  fine 
position,  but  unless  he  has  the  ability  to  hold  it,  by  and  by 
he  will  find  his  own  level.  And  I  suggest  the  question  for 
life  choices  is  this :  “Shall  I  build  up  by  pulls  from  with¬ 
out,  as  a  monument  is  built  up  by  the  raising  of  blocks  of 
dead  stone  and  fitting  them  into  place?  Or  shall  I  build 
my  life  as  a  tree  grows,  by  an  inner  principle  that  thrusts 
itself  upward  toward  God’s  sunlight  and  the  fixed  stars?” 
The  noblest  thing  I  ever  heard  about  Abraham  Lincoln 
was  a  phrase,  I  think  of  Mr.  John  Hay,  when  he  said  that 
Lincoln  “simply  permitted  himself  to  grow.” 

I  recall  how  a  few  years  ago  the  Association  of  College 
Registrars  declared  that  out  of  eight  hundred  college 
graduates  fifty-three  had  a  chance  to  gain  a  place  among 
noted  Americans,  let  us  say  those  whose  names  are  in 
Who’s  Who.  I  am  quite  confident  that  if  you  were  to 
follow  up  this  fifty-three  you  would  find  them  to  be  men 
and  women  who  relied  for  success  not  upon  pull  and  the 
accidents  of  place  or  family  or  environment,  but  rather 
upon  personality  and  merit  and  the  growing  ability  to 
meet  the  demands  of  life.  It  is  said  that  when  Elihu  Root 
went  down  to  New  York  to  make  his  way  as  an  unknown 
young  lawyer,  influential  friends  offered  him  letters  which 
would  give  him  entree  with  powerful  New  York  connec¬ 
tions.  But  Root  said,  “No,  I  don’t  want  them.  I  am 
going  down  to  New  York  to  find  out  whether  I  am  a  man 
or  a  mouse.”  To  most  of  us  this  is  a  counsel  of  perfec¬ 
tion,  perhaps  unnecessary,  certainly  unattainable  in  most 
cases.  If  any  young  man  here  ever  goes  down  to  New 


172 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


York  and  can  take  letters  with  him,  I  would  advise  him 
to  do  so,  if  he  does  not  depend  on  them.  But  the  sturdy 
independence  of  Mr.  Root  must  limit  his  use  of  them. 

I  wish  that  everyone  here  might  read  that  whimsical  but 
brilliant  address  delivered  at  old  St.  Andrews  last  May 
by  Sir  J.  M.  Barrie.  He  calls  it  “Courage.”  With  hum¬ 
ble  self-depreciation  he  admits  that  it  may  not  be  dry* 
enough  for  a  college  address.  He  quotes  old  Izaak 
Walton  in  the  saying  “That  doubtless  the  Almighty  could 
have  created  a  finer  fruit  than  the  strawberry,  but  that 
doubtless,  also,  He  never  did.”  And  Barrie  continues: 
“Doubtless  also  He  could  have  provided  us  with  better 
fun  than  hard  work,  but  I  don’t  know  what  it  is.  To  be 
born  poor  is  probably  the  next  best  thing.  The  greatest 
glory  that  has  ever  come  to  me  was  to  be  swallowed  up  in 
London,  not  knowing  a  soul,  with  no  means  of  subsistence, 
and  the  fun  of  working  till  the  stars  went  out.  To  have 
known  anyone  would  have  spoilt  it.  I  did  not  even  quite 
know  the  language.  I  rang  for  my  boots  and  they  thought 
I  said  ‘a  glass  of  water/  so  I  drank  the  water  and  worked 
on.  There  was  no  food  in  the  cupboard,  so  I  did  not  need 
to  waste  time  in  eating. ...  Oh,  to  be  a  free  lance  of 
journalism  again,  that  darling  jade.  Those  were  the 
days.  Too  good  to  last.”  Few  of  us  are  J.  M.  Barries, 
and  the  one-talent  man  may  shrink  a  little  from  the  fight 
which  the  ten- talent  man  faces  with  sheer  joy.  But  from 
the  life  of  any  man  or  woman  something  has  been  left 
out,  if  he  or  she  does  not  thrill  to  the  ecstasy  of  facing  a 
hard  test  and  winning  without  pulls  or  influence,  winning 
out  on  the  basis  of  sheer  inner  ability  to  meet  and  con¬ 
quer  the  most  disheartening  obstacles. 

You  will  remember  that  in  1900  the  bosses  of  the  “Old 


THE  UPWARD  CALLING 


173 


Guard,”  Senator  Platt  and  Senator  Penrose,  wanted  to 
retire  Mr.  Roosevelt  from  public  life,  so  they  shelved  him 
in  the  vice  presidency.  Roosevelt  protested  with  vigorous 
and  picturesque  English  against  thus  committing  political 
hari-kiri.  Overborne  by  pressure  from  all  sides,  vowing 
he  would  ne’er  consent,  he  did  consent,  and  landed  in 
retirement  as  the  presiding  officer  of  that  group  of  genial 
elderly  gentlemen  who  study  the  art  of  obstruction  at  the 
north  end  of  the  Capitol.  Then  came  the  assassination  of 
McKinley,  and  Roosevelt  became  by  accident  the  Pres¬ 
ident  of  the  United  States,  while  his  enemies  ground  their 
teeth  in  vain.  But  in  1904  Roosevelt  ran  for  the  pres¬ 
idency  on  the  basis  of  a  square  nomination  for  that  high 
office.  On  the  night  of  the  fateful  second  Tuesday  in 
November  1904,  the  returns  came  rolling  in  to  the  White 
House,  and  within  a  short  time  it  was  apparent  that  Mr. 
Roosevelt  had  been  triumphantly  elected.  When  con¬ 
vinced  of  this  fact  he  strode  across  the  room,  greeted  his 
wife,  and  said,  "‘Well,  my  dear,  we  are  no  longer  an 
accident.” 

There  is  something  about  that  instinct  of  Roosevelt 
which  should  appeal  to  every  normal  man  and  woman. 
We  seek  advancement,  and  we  seek  it  rightly.  But  when 
it  comes,  you  will  be  at  peace  with  yourself,  and  strong 
for  your  task,  only  if  you  feel  that  it  has  come,  not  by  the 
accident  of  place,  but  by  the  attainment  of  your  own 
unaided  personality. 

Did  I  say  unaided?  Well,  let  me  revise  that.  Unaided 
so  far  as  the  externals  of  pull  and  place  and  influence  are 
concerned.  Unaided  in  the  sheer  reliance  on  your  own 
inner  merit.  But  when  you  raise  the  question  as  to  how 
this  inner  merit  is  to  be  acquired,  then  not  unaided.  We 


174 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


shall  get  promotion  as  we  make  the  most  of  ourselves,  ac¬ 
cording  to  Matthew  Arnold.  But,  reasons  Principal 
Shairp,  we  cannot  make  the  most  of  ourselves  without 
a  motive  outside  of  ourselves.  The  plant  or  the  tree 
grows  upward  because  it  has  drawn  its  resources  from 
above,  and  so  must  we. 

Here  again  observe  the  amazing  fitness  of  the  words  of 
Jesus.  What  was  the  basis  of  this  second  man's  promo¬ 
tion  ?  He  took  the  lowest  seat.  How  did  he  get  up  in  the 
world?  I  can  put  the  answer  in  a  single  sentence.  His 
fitness  for  promotion  arose  through  his  friendly  relations 
with  the  personality  in  the  highest  seat.  He  merited  a 
higher  place  through  his  friendship  with  the  host. 

Our  fitness  to  rise  in  the  world  will  be  cultivated  as  we 
develop  friendly  relations  with  the  higher  things  in  life. 
One  grows  into  breadth  and  grasp  and  fineness  by  keeping 
the  upper  windows  of  the  soul  open.  Why,  I  would  want 
an  eternal  lifetime  to  get  all  that  mu^ic  has  to  give  me  of 
upward  impulse.  Another  for  the  great  poets.  Another 
for  the  great  artists.  Another  for  the  tremendous  sweep 
and  range  of  history.  Another  for  the  study  of  the 
heights  and  depths  and  possibilities  of  the  human  soul. 
Another  for  the  range  of  vast  and  complex  social  prob¬ 
lems.  Many  of  us  are  unfitted  for  high  place  because  we 
have  developed  no  affinity  for  high  things.  Dr.  Watkin- 
son  used  to  tell  of  a  gentleman  who  captured  an  eagle  and 
kept  it  tethered  in  his  backyard,  eating  its  meals  out  of  a 
pie  plate.  No  more  pitiful,  that,  than  souls  created  for 
eagle  flights,  and  tethered  down  to  the  routine  of  sordid 
commonplace  in  thinking,  and  of  superficial  jazz  in  recrea¬ 
tion.  Harry  Emerson  Fosdick,  in  a  recent  article,  tells  of 
a  remark  made  about  a  certain  man  by  an  enthusiastic 


THE  UPWARD  CALLING 


175 


youth,  to  the  effect  that  this  extraordinary  individual  kept 
in  mind  every  card  played  in  a  game  of  bridge.  An  ob* 
servant  young  lady  replied  with  a  touch  of  scorn,  “Has  it 
occurred  to  you  that  he  is  forty-five  years  old,  and  that 
that  is  all  he  knows  ?”  Oh,  the  eagle,  taking  his  meals  in 
a  backyard  out  of  a  pie  plate! 

Friendship  with  the  highest  things?  Yes,  more  than 
that.  Friendship  with  the  highest  person!  Thus  did  this 
man  get  his  promotion.  Friend  to  the  great  host,  he  was 
fitted  for  the  fellowship  of  the  upper  circle.  Friend  to  the 
great  Host,  “Christ  in  you  the  hope  of  glory,”  then  the 
upper  circle  becomes  our  native  air.  This  it  is  that  makes 
men  great.  I  stood  not  long  ago  in  Westminster  Abbey, 
and  bared  my  head  at  the  grave  of  David  Livingstone. 
The  poor  humble  son  of  a  Scotch  weaver,  he  lies  there 
among  great  kings  and  poets  and  nobles,  the  peer  of  them 
all.  And  I  remembered  those  lines  of  Mr.  Punch : 

“Open  the  Abbey  doors,  and  bear  him  in 
To  sleep  with  king  and  statesman,  chief  and  sage, 

The  Missionary  come  of  weaver-kin, 

But  great  by  work  that  brooks  no  lower  wage. 

He  needs  no  epitaph  to  guard  a  name 

Which  men  shall  prize  while  worthy  work  is  known; 

He  lived  and  died  for  good — be  this  his  fame: 

Let  marble  crumble:  this  is  Living-stone.” 

What  was  it  that  lifted  the  humble  weaver’s  boy  to  that 
proud  eminence  ?  What  fitted  him  to  hear  the  divine  voice 
saying,  “Friend,  come  up  higher”  ?  It  was  because  he  had 
made  the  great  Host  his  friend,  because  to  Jesus  he  had 
consecrated  every  power  and  passion  of  his  life.  This  had 
given  to  the  man  that  breadth  which  has  made  him  today 


176 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


the  symbol  of  a  continent’s  redemption,  and  the  hero  of 
the  world.  Men  will  never  forget  how,  in  devotion  to  his 
great  Friend,  Livingstone  toiled  on,  wracked  by  pain, 
weakened  by  disease,  under  pitiless,  pelting  rain  soaking 
his  baggage  and  himself,  struggling  through  swamps, 
attacked  by  fevers ;  yet  big  enough  to  write,  only  a  month 
before  the  end,  “Nothing,  nothing  earthly  will  make  me 
give  up  my  work  in  despair.  I  encourage  myself  in  the 
Lord  my  God,  and  go  forward/’  What  was  it  made  him 
great?  Listen  to  the  prayer  set  down  for  his  last  earthly 
birthday:  “My  Jesus,  my  King,  my  Life,  my  All;  I 
again  dedicate  my  whole  self  to  Thee.  Accept  me,  and 
grant,  Oh  gracious  Father,  that  ere  this  year  is  gone  I  may 
finish  my  task.  In  Jesus’  name  I  ask  it.  Amen,  so  let 
it  be.” 

It  was  thus  that  God’s  voice  came  to  him  at  the  last, 
“David  Livingstone,  friend  of  God,  go  up  higher.”  “And 
so  he  passed  over  the  river,  and  all  the  trumpets  sounded 
for  him  on  the  other  side.” 


XIII 


THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  HOUSE 

Text:  Jesus,  knowing  that  the  Father  had  given  all  things  into 
his  hands,  and  that  he  came  forth  from  God,  and  goeth 
unto  God,  riseth  from  supper,  and  layeth  aside  his  gar¬ 
ments;  and  he  took  a  towel,  and  girded  himself. 

— John  13  :3,  4 

There  is  a  delicate  human  instinct  which  always  shrinks 
from  the  portrayal  of  Christ  upon  the  stage.  Yet  if  any 
such  attempt  has  justified  itself,  outside  the  sober  and 
reverent  atmosphere  of  Oberammergau,  it  is  that  of  Mr. 
Walter  Hampden  as  the  Master  in  Charles  Rann  Ken¬ 
nedy’s  “The  Servant  in  the  House.”  At  the  final  verge 
of  daring  it  is  saved  from  irreverence  only  by  the  delicacy 
of  a  sincere  art.  But  the  tang  and  grip  of  it — the  stag¬ 
gering  paradox — is  in  the  fine  dignity  and  pensive  beauty 
of  the  Servant  over  against  the  repulsive  trade  of  the 
Curate’s  brother.  Christ  touching  hands  with  a  cleaner 
of  sewers!  Here  is  the  dramatic  contrast,  partly  shock¬ 
ing,  wholly  fascinating,  linking  transcendent  glory  with 
the  most  utter  abasement. 

Less  vivid  and  violent,  perhaps  even  more  beautiful, 
are  twin  pictures  drawn  by  two  consummate  spiritual 
teachers  of  the  last  century,  Tennyson  and  Browning. 
The  first  reveals  Gareth  in  the  kitchen.  That  fine  flower 
of  Arthur’s  young  chivalry  gave  himself  to  the  most  re¬ 
pulsive  tasks,  moiling  through  dirt  and  grease  and  grime 


1 77 


lyS 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


and  smoke,  for  love  and  honor’s  sake.  Enduring  jibes, 
insults,  taunts  and  rough  usage,  the  boy  had  vowed  to  toil 
for  a  year  and  a  day  that  he  might  keep  faith  with  his 
love  and  the  chivalrous  aspirations  of  his  life.  Here 
Tennyson  reveals  a  divine  splendor  glowing  in  a  kitchen  as 
it  never  shone  across  the  jousting  fields  of  glory  in 
Camelot. 

“And  Gareth  bow’d  himself 
With  all  obedience  to  the  King,  and  wrought 
All  kind  of  service  with  a  noble  ease 
That  graced  the  lowliest  act  in  doing  it.” 

In  the  other  scene,  portrayed  by  Mr.  Browning,  we 
catch  the  echo  of  the  perfect  praise,  the  consummate  Te 
Deum  that  rolled  up  to  God  from  a  shoemaker’s  bench. 

“Morning,  evening,  noon  and  night, 

‘Praise  God!’  sang  Theocrite.” 

And  when  the  humble  boy  had  been  lifted  from  the  shoe¬ 
maker’s  bench  to  the  papal  chair,  the  Almighty  Father 
found  the  Pope’s  prayers  and  praises  no  substitute  for  the 
song  of  the  humble  workman.  He  missed  the  “little  human 
praise.”  And  finally  He  promoted — yes,  that  is  the  word 
— promoted  Theocrite  from  the  papal  chair  to  the  worker’s 
bench  again,  that  the  fullness  of  His  glory  might  be  real¬ 
ized  in  the  lowliest  setting. 

These  contrasts,  however,  are  bare  and  insipid  when 
compared  to  the  vivid  colors  in  which  John  draws  his 
picture.  “Jesus,  knowing  that  the  Father  had  given  all 
things  into  his  hands,  and  that  he  came  forth  from  God, 
and  goeth  unto  God,  riseth  from  supper,  and  layeth  aside 
his  garments ;  and  he  took  a  towel,  and  girded  himself.” 
Could  anything  more  staggering  be  imagined?  In  the 


THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  HOUSE 


179 


full  consciousness  of  His  majesty  as  very  God  of  very 
God,  in  the  climax  of  clear  intuition  concerning  His  own 
transcendence,  and  in  the  climax,  too,  of  His  ineffable 
passion,  He  deliberately  dons  the  habiliments  and  performs 
the  office  of  a  common  slave !  He  does  it  with  purpose 
and  method.  There  is  nothing  incidental  or  accidental 
about  this  passage.  It  is  as  one  who  fulfills  a  formal 
and  pre-arranged  program.  And  in  the  clear  recollection 
of  His  best-beloved  and  longest-lived  disciple,  who  looks 
back  from  the  heights  of  old  age,  this  incident  is  singled 
out  as  a  symbol  of  time-long  significance.  Its  vivid  colors 
lift  their  signal  from  this  spiritual  Mount  Everest  of  all 
the  ages.  Here  the  extremes  meet.  My  old  mathematics 
teacher  used  to  say  that  he  could  work  his  way  to  infinity 
by  the  back  side  of  zero.  In  this  scene  one  works  his  way 
to  undreamed  heights  of  exaltation  through  unsealed 
abysses  of  humiliation.  Here  glory  and  shame  interpen¬ 
etrate.  Nor  is  the  resultant  of  this  paradox  any  mere 
neutralizing  of  the  one  by  the  other.  On  the  contrary,  the 
glory  is  dazzling,  the  shame  ineffable.  And  we  shall  never 
read  these  words  aright  until  we  come  to  see  in  them  the 
climax  moment  of  Christ’s  divine  consciousness  as  John 
viewed  it.  Here,  girt  with  a  towel  instead  of  a  tiara, 
Jesus  reveals  the  brightness  of  His  Father’s  glory.  Con¬ 
sider  John’s  background  of  stern  monotheism  and  reflect 
by  what  a  tremendous  leap  his  thought  passed  from  Jesus 
the  Man  to  Jesus  the  God.  Ponder  the  social  environment 
of  his  times,  and  try  to  imagine  what  it  must  have  meant 
that  his  thought  passed  from  Jesus  the  God  to  Jesus  the 
Servant — aye,  if  you  please,  to  Jesus  the  Slave. 

There  are  those,  as  we  know,  who  seek  high  place 
through  a  lurking  sense  of  their  own  unworthiness.  Small 


i8o  THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 

people  dare  not  let  themselves  be  seen  doing  small  things. 
Back  of  much  pomp  and  circumstance  in  many  lives  is 
what  the  psychologists  call  the  “inferiority  complex.” 
One  must  “keep  up  a  front”  to  cover  the  pitiful  in¬ 
adequacy  of  that  which  lies  behind.  I  have  been  told  of 
one  of  our  great  university  presidents,  who  used  to  enter¬ 
tain  a  constant  stream  of  guests.  Among  these  were 
many  Englishmen  who  by  immemorial  custom  left  their 
shoes  outside  the  door  at  night,  to  be  cleaned.  But  the 
servants  all  scorned  so  menial  a  task.  And  it  is  said  that 
the  president’s  wife,  a  gifted  and  cultured  woman,  was 
accustomed  to  gather  up  her  guests’  shoes  in  the  wee  small 
hours  and  polish  them  with  her  own  hands.  The  servants 
were  too  small  to  dare  a  humble  thing.  The  mistress  was 
too  great  to  be  humbled  by  it. 

Then  there  are  those  who  sometimes  seek  humble  tasks 
with  a  kind  of  morbid  affectation.  There  is  a  humility 
which  amounts  only  to  inverted  egotism.  You  will  meet 
men  who  stoop  to  humble  tasks  with  a  certain  ostentation. 
The  Pope  himself  used  to  wash  the  feet  of  a  few  selected 
beggars  once  a  year,  and  he  did  it  with  regal  pride.  The 
obtrusive  and  effusive  humility  of  Uriah  Heep  has  its 
counterpart  outside  the  pages  of  fiction.  Men  have  told 
me  how  unimportant  they  were,  at  such  great  length  and 
with  such  extreme  volubility,  that  I  could  not  but  conclude 
that  they  protested  too  much.  Unimportance  is  more 
economical  of  time  and  energy  in  telling  about  itself ! 

In  contrast  to  these  extremes  behold  the  beautiful  poise 
of  Jesus — the  easy  nonchalance  with  which  He  received 
regal  honors.  Not  even  the  Caesars  dared  to  claim  the 
divine  worship  which  he  accepted  unperturbed.  He  never 
went  out  of  His  way  to  receive  such  worship ;  but  He  never 


THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  HOUSE 


181 


went  out  of  His  way,  either,  to  escape  it.  And  in  His 
moments  of  humility  there  is  not  a  trace  of  affectation  or 
morbidness.  He  neither  shrank  from  it  nor  seemed  to 
stoop  while  He  was  performing  it.  Ostentatious  humility 
was  as  foreign  to  Him  as  ostentatious  pride. 

We  shall  explain  this  utter  indifference  to  human  ranks 
and  dignities  only  as  we  discover  some  great  motive  which 
thrilled  through  His  whole  being  and  obliterated  the  differ¬ 
ences  of  place  and  function  which  loom  so  largely  in  the 
consciousness  of  ordinary  men.  You  may  take  two  un¬ 
equal  numbers  and  if  you  multiply  both  by  infinity  you 
have  brought  them  to  equality.  If  you  view  from  the 
range  of  the  farthest  fixed  star  the  distance  that  separates 
New  York  and  Chicago,  it  is  extinguished  in  the  sweep  of 
those  incalculable  distances.  And  John  has  given  us  the 
common  denominator,  the  great  leveling  motive,  whose 
tremendous  sweep  and  range  obliterates  all  our  petty 
distinctions  of  place  and  rank.  “Having  loved  his  own  he 
loved  them  to  the  end.”  Here  is  the  common  denominator. 
Here  is  the  sweep  and  range  of  a  great  passion  which  for 
Him  made  all  the  difference  between  great  and  small,  high 
and  low,  seem  inconsequential.  He  loved  all  men  every¬ 
where,  and  He  loved  them  unto  the  uttermost.  There  was 
no  limit  to  it.  His  consuming  passion  for  humanity  leaped 
all  chasms,  and  not  only  leaped  but  obliterated  them. 

Let  us  now  study  the  impact  of  this  scene  upon  the 
practical  questions  of  our  own  day.  It  is  a  truism  to  say 
that  our  supreme  problem  is  that  of  inequality.  It  is  the 
old  unrest  and  misunderstanding  between  the  king  and  the 
servant,  the  ruler  and  the  slave.  It  is  the  misunderstand¬ 
ing  of  the  poor  by  the  rich  and  of  the  rich  by  the  poor. 
It  is  the  strain  and  tug  between  high  and  low,  the  learned 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


182 

and  the  unlearned,  the  strong  and  the  weak.  In  Shake¬ 
speare’s  “Pericles”  the  fishermen  are  talking,  and  one  says 
to  another,  “Master,  I  marvel  how  the  fishes  live  in  the 
sea.”  And  the  other  replies,  “Why,  as  men  do  a-land; 
the  great  ones  eat  up  the  little  ones.”  That  is  the  tragedy 
of  modern  life.  Bring  an  end  to  that  tragedy  and  you 
usher  in  the  millennium ! 

But  how  shall  this  be  done?  What  binding,  leveling 
principle  will  ever  solve  the  problem  of  human  inequality  ? 
I  join  with  those  who  contend  that  the  modern  world  does 
not  have  the  equality  of  opportunity  which  it  must  some 
day  attain  if  there  is  to  be  any  future  to  civilization. 
There  can  be  no  question  but  that  the  great  industrial 
game  has  often  been  played  with  loaded  dice.  But  when 
this  has  been  admitted,  no  thoughtful  man  can  ever  see  a 
permanent  panacea  through  any  attempted  equality  in  the 
disposition  of  property  or  any  artificial  expedients  looking 
toward  the  bringing  of  all  men  to  a  dead  level  of  equal 
possessions.  Differences  of  inborn  capacity  will  wreck 
any  such  artificial  scheme  within  a  decade. 

No,  human  inequality  must  be  countered  by  a  leveling 
principle  which  comes  not  from  without  but  from  within. 
And  Jesus  has  given  us  the  key  to  it.  For  He  revealed 
himself  as  the  Great  Lover.  He  taught  us  real  passion  for 
humanity.  He  put  into  us  a  new  spirit  of  unselfish  sym¬ 
pathy  which  enables  one  to  look  at  his  fellow  men  with 
fresh  vision.  Moreover,  He  showed  us  how  the  meanest 
and  foulest  of  mankind  were  infinitely  worth  while  when 
viewed  over  against  the  background  of  a  divine  Saviour 
who  died  that  they  might  live.  He  taught  us  that  love  was 
thus  the  new  commandment:  “A  new  commandment  I 
give  unto  you,  that  ye  love  one  another,  even  as  I  have 


THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  HOUSE 


183 

loved  you.”  And  the  same  disciple  who  records  this 
scene  said,  “We  know  that  we  have  passed  from  death 
into  life,  because  we  love  the  brethren.” 

Observe,  if  you  will,  how  this  leveling  principle,  work¬ 
ing  from  within,  operates  in  human  society.  Recall  those 
splendid  words  of  the  Magnificat,  “He  hath  put  down  the 
mighty  from  their  seats,  and  hath  exalted  them  of  low 
degree.”  Now  men  who  would  bring  about  human  equal¬ 
ity  by  force  have  always  conceived  this  passage  in  the 
sense  of  violence.  The  great  and  the  powerful  are  to 
be  forcibly  dragged  down  from  their  high  places.  The 
poor  and  the  humble  are  forcibly  to  thrust  themselves  up 
to  high  place.  This  is  the  magnificat  of  the  French  Revo¬ 
lution.  This  is  the  magnificat  of  many  who  would  adjust 
the  undoubted  wrongs  of  labor  by  the  violent  dethroning 
of  those  in  power  and  the  equally  violent  enthroning  of 
the  proletariat.  I  remember  how  in  a  certain  city  a  threat¬ 
ening  mob  of  workmen  cried  out  to  a  company  of  em¬ 
ployers  riding  in  an  automobile,  “We  will  drag  you  from 
that  machine  and  ride  in  it  ourselves.”  But  what  social 
progress,  what  hope  of  ultimate  solution,  can  ever  be 
achieved  by  changing  the  riders  in  the  automobile  ?  Rus¬ 
sia  did  that,  and  the  little  finger  of  Lenine  is  thicker  than 
the  loins  of  Nicholas.  Where  the  old  czars  chastised  with 
whips,  the  bolshevik  tyrants  chastise  with  scorpions. 

But  there  is  a  better  magnificat.  It  seeks  to  bring  down 
the  mighty  from  their  seats,  not  by  violent  compulsion 
from  without,  but  by  an  irresistible  impulsion  from  within. 
When  the  love  of  Christ  constrains  a  man,  even  though  he 
were  a  king  he  will  be  inevitably  impelled  to  step  down 
that  he  may  clasp  hands  with  the  humblest  of  his  sub¬ 
jects.  What  is  even  more,  he  will  not  know  that  he  is 


184 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


stepping  down.  And  when  the  love  of  Christ  constrains 
the  peasant,  it  brings  into  his  life  a  new  dignity  that  up¬ 
lifts  and  glorifies.  Then  men  can  “talk  with  crowds  and 
keep  their  virtue,  or  walk  with  Kings — nor  lose  the 
common  touch.”  Then  without  strain  or  agitation  or  irri¬ 
tation,  without  even  the  consciousness  of  anything  un¬ 
natural  or  abnormal,  love  brings  down  the  mighty  from 
their  seats  and  exalts  them  of  low  degree. 

There  is  a  very  noble  book  written  by  the  late  Pro¬ 
fessor  Royce  of  Harvard  University,  in  which  he  deals 
with  the  fundamentals  of  life  and  religion.  And  this 
renowned  scholar  quotes  from  the  master  philosophers. 
He  deals  with  Plato  and  Aristotle  and  Hegel  and  Kant; 
with  the  names  of  the  great  thinkers  who  have  won  re¬ 
nown  through  all  the  centuries.  But  when  Royce  under¬ 
takes  to  give  us  the  essence  of  the  Christian  religion,  he 
takes  us  down  into  the  humblest  walks  of  life.  He  tells 
of  Ida  Lewis,  keeper  of  a  lighthouse  in  Narragansett  Bay 
for  fifty  years,  who  saved  eighteen  lives,  again  and  again 
risking  her  own.  And  the  Harvard  philosopher  immortal¬ 
izes  the  name  of  Ida  Lewis,  writes  it  there  along  with 
Plato  and  Aristotle  and  all  the  rest.  She  had  probably 
never  heard  of  these  philosophers.  Yet  her  sacrificial 
living  had  furnished  the  finest  possible  illustration  of 
Kant’s  maxim,  “So  act  as  never  to  have  reason  to  regret 
the  principle  of  your  action.”  And  then  the  philosopher 
tells  about  Daniel  Williams,  the  lighthouse  keeper  at 
Little  Traverse  Bay  on  Lake  Michigan,  who  went  out  in  a 
bitter  storm  and  lost  his  own  life  to  save  the  lives  of  his 
fellow  men.  And  along  with  him  his  faithful  wife,  who, 
for  three  days  and  nights  during  the  storm,  kept  her  lights 
burning,  still  remembering,  even  in  bitter  grief,  the  spirit 


THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  HOUSE 


185 


of  Him  of  whom  it  was  said,  “He  saved  others,  himself  he 
cannot  save.”  And  to  Professor  Royce  this  is  religion ; 
this  is  the  fundamental  expression  of  life  at  its  highest; 
this  is  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  Oh  yes,  Plato  and  Aristotle  and 
Hegel  and  Kant!  But  along  with  them  Ida  Lewis  and 
Daniel  Williams  and  Mrs.  Daniel  Williams !  “He  hath 
put  down  the  mighty  from  their  seats,  and  exalted  them 
of  low  degree.”  Love,  the  supreme  leveler,  impels  the 
greatest  and  the  humblest  to  clasp  hands  across  the 
centuries. 

I  stood  not  long  ago  in  a  little  way  station  of  the  Penn¬ 
sylvania  Railroad.  Whiling  away  the  dull  moments  of 
waiting,  I  saw  on  the  somewhat  dingy  wall  a  little  poster, 
an  official  bulletin  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  to  its 
employees.  And  my  heart  leaped  as  the  heart  of  the 
weary  searcher  must  leap  when  he  comes  at  last  upon  the 
vein  of  gold.  For  I  saw  there  the  revelation  of  that  glory 
in  our  common  humanity  which  impelled  the  apostle  to 
say,  “Honor  all  men.”  Alonzo  Dawson  had  been  for 
twenty-five  years  a  section  hand  and  track  walker.  Five 
years  ago  he  was  so  injured  by  an  accident  that  the  Com¬ 
pany  had  placed  him  as  a  watchman  at  the  Steubenville 
Street  crossing  in  the  little  city  of  Cambridge,  Ohio.  The 
fast  train  is  approaching,  and  Dawson  takes  his  usual 
place  with  the  “STOP”  signal  in  his  hand.  Unnoticed  by 
him  a  little  group  of  school  children  has  drawn  near,  and 
he  turns  to  see  a  four-year-old  girl  standing  helplessly  on 
the  track  as  the  engine  thunders  on.  There  was  no  time  to 
pull  her  back.  Only  one  thing  to  do,  and  Dawson  did  it. 
With  a  flying  leap  this  old  man  seized  the  little  baby  and 
hurled  himself  over  the  track  in  front  of  the  engine. 
Spectators  said  that  he  missed  being  ground  to  death  by 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


18 6 

the  narrow  space  of  a  few  inches.  He  did  not  know  this 
little  girl  at  all.  But  gladly,  at  a  moment’s  call,  this  crip¬ 
pled  old  man  had  risked  his  life  to  save  the  child  of  a 
stranger;  and  at  the  end  of  a  very  brief  statement  sum¬ 
marizing  these  facts  were  the  following  words:  “We 
are  proud  to  share  with  Alonzo  Dawson  in  maintaining 
the  high  traditions  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad.”  It 
was  signed,  “Samuel  Rea,  President.”  Yes,  He  has 
brought  down  the  mighty  from  their  seats,  and  exalted 
them  of  low  degree.  Alonzo  Dawson,  track  walker — 
Samuel  Rea,  President — they  clasp  hands  across  the 
chasm.  Love,  the  great  leveler,  uplifted  the  humble  man 
to  the  dignity  of  a  hero,  and  love  leaped  from  the  heart  of 
his  chief  in  glad  recognition.  I  wonder  if  Samuel  Rea 
and  Alonzo  Dawson  could  not  sit  together  at  a  table  and 
iron  out  the  differences  between  the  employer  and  the 
employed ! 

So  do  life’s  extremes  meet  on  the  great  plains  of  love 
and  sacrifice  and  service.  “He  that  is  greatest  among  you 
shall  be  your  servant.”  There  was  a  very  curious  theory 
of  Nietzsche  that  the  doctrine  of  Christian  meekness  was 
only  an  alibi  for  human  weakness.  He  declared  that 
Christ’s  doctrine  of  sacrificial  love  was  only  in  effect 
weakness  whistling  to  keep  up  its  courage.  Men  who 
could  do  nothing  but  submit  had  excused  themselves  by 
making  a  virtue  of  submission.  This  sacrificial  doctrine 
was  sometimes  accepted  by  the  weak  as  an  alibi,  and  was 
sometimes  imposed  upon  them  by  the  strong  in  order  to 
keep  them  contented.  This  was  the  view  of  Nietzsche, 
and  from  one  angle  it  is  a  very  plausible  theory.  There  is 
historically,  however,  one  supreme  difficulty  with  the 
theory,  in  that  the  facts  are  all  against  it.  There  was  a 


THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  HOUSE 


187 


time  in  human  thinking  when,  if  the  facts  were  against 
the  theory,  we  threw  away  the  facts.  But  we  have  at  last, 
thank  God,  arrived  at  that  time  when,  if  the  facts  are 
against  it,  we  throw  away  the  theory.  And  the  fact  is 
that  the  great  doctrine  of  the  loving  Servant  in  the  House, 
the  glory  of  sacrifice,  was  developed  and  enunciated  by 
the  strongest  man  who  ever  walked  this  earth,  and  that  it 
has  been  embodied  ever  since  in  the  lives  of  those  who  are 
physical  and  mental  and  spiritual  giants.  It  is  not  the 
alibi  of  weakness.  It  is  not  inferiority  whistling  to  keep 
its  courage  up.  It  is  rather  that  deliberate  program  which 
divine  strength  has  set  for  itself  in  this  world  of  need 
and  sin  and  sorrow.  It  rests  back  upon  the  philosophy 
that  self-limitations  are  not  signs  of  weakness,  but  of 
strength.  And  it  finds  the  supreme  blessing,  the  ultimate 
glory  of  life,  in  the  spirit  of  the  strongest  who  “dares  to 
be  strong  for  the  rest.” 

Here  is  the  solvent  of  what  might  be  called  our  per¬ 
pendicular  differences  as  well  as  our  horizontal  ones.  As 
it  levels  our  castes  which  divide  between  the  high  and  the 
low,  it  also  merges  our  bitter  antagonisms  between  left 
wing  and  right  wing.  God  forbid  that  I  should  join  the 
common  rout  in  the  vulgar  outcry  against  all  creeds.  For 
I  see  in  every  great  creed  the  crystallized  expression  of  a 
great  love.  The  men,  for  instance,  who  wrote  the  Nicene 
Creed  had  a  supreme  experience  of  Jesus,  and  out  of  a 
passion  of  love  and  loyalty  to  Him  they  sought  through 
carefully  chosen  words  to  crystallize  the  essence  of  that 
experience.  They  failed  to  do  it  perfectly,  of  course,  and 
their  attempt  has  often  been  misused  and  abused.  But 
that  beautiful  form  of  sound  words  comes  to  me  as  an  old 
kodak  picture  which  recalls  through  the  long  years  the  ^ 


1 88  THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 

“touch  of  a  vanish’d  hand,  and  the  sound  of  a  voice  that 
is  still.”  So  the  Creed  calls  up  the  passion  and  wonder 
and  tenderness  of  men  not  far  removed  from  the  actual 
eye-witnesses  of  Jesus.  The  symbol  is  a  glorious  thing  if 
it  helps  us  back  to  the  state  of  mind,  to  the  ineffable  expe¬ 
rience  in  the  hearts  of  the  men  from  which  it  came.  It  is 
a  splendid  reminder  and  stimulant  of  the  love  of  Christ 
in  a  bygone  time. 

But  a  creed  without  the  setting  of  love  is  a  monstrous 
thing.  Blind,  hard,  dogmatic  adherence  to  a  form  of 
words  may  degenerate  into  a  pitifully  Christless  defense 
of  technicalities  about  Christ.  There  is  only  one  funda¬ 
mental  orthodoxy.  “If  any  man  loveth  not  the  Lord,  let 
him  be  anathema.”  There,  gentlemen  of  liberal  and  con¬ 
servative  camps  alike,  is  your  only  criterion.  It  is  not 
so  much  a  question  of  old  or  new  as  it  is  a  question  of 
cold  or  warm.  It  is  not  the  area  and  content  of  one’sl 
intellectual  holdings.  It  is  the  voltage  with  which  the 
hot  heart  leaps  out  to  cry  even  with  doubting  Thomas, 
“My  Lord  and  my  God.”  It  is  said  that  Jonathan  Ed¬ 
wards  used  to  describe  his  son-in-law  as  a  sinner,  but  “a 
very  sweet  sinner.”  Between  a  sour  saint  and  a  sweet 
sinner  most  of  us  would  spend  little  time  in  the  choosing. 
It  is  related  that  on  the  occasion,  many  years  ago,  of  a  cer¬ 
tain  noted  heresy  prosecution,  a  man  of  poetic  tempera¬ 
ment  and  little  taste  for  precise  intellectual  distinctions, 
but  of  large  capacity  to  love,  was  on  trial  before  his 
presbytery.  The  prosecutor  warned  the  court  against 
being  led  astray  by  the  sweet  and  beautiful  Christian  per¬ 
sonality  of  the  defendant.  Can  you  imagine  a  more 
monstrous  thing?  Try  a  man’s  Christian  character  after 
warning  the  court  against  being  misled  by  his  Christian 


THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  HOUSE  189 

virtues!  Would  God  that  left  wing  and  right  wing  alike 
might  learn  to  pray  together  and  argue  apart !  The  nation 
stands  hungry  and  waiting  for  a  great  revival  of  religion. 
That  revival  might  come  if  forces  in  both  camps,  now 
vociferously  and  intolerantly  girding  against  the  intoler¬ 
ance  of  the  other  camp,  would  join  together  from  the  same 
platform  of  practical  service  in  making  joint  appeal  to 
sinful  humanity  in  the  name  of  Christ. 

“They  drew  a  circle  and  shut  me  out 
Heretic  rebel,  a  thing  to  flout; 

But  Love  and  I  had  the  wit  to  win, 

For  we  dreW  a  circle  that  took  them  in.” 

And  that  is  the  highest  orthodoxy,  k1  ' 

There  remains  another  angle  of  this  passage  which  must 
not  be  neglected.  Jesus  gives  us  the  only  setting  in  which 
love  can  work.  This  stupendous  act  of  humiliation  and 
glory  alike  is  an  act  of  cleansing.  The  mere  repetition 
of  foot- washing  is  not  the  injunction  of  this  scene.  But 
its  true  intent  is  in  order  that  we  may  understand  how 
love  itself  is  helpless  unless  it  has  a  cleansed  field  in  which 
to  work,  and  cleansed  tools  by  which  to  work.  I  think  the 
Kingdom  of  God  would  have  come  finally  and  triumph¬ 
antly  then  and  there  except  for  one  clause  in  this  passage, 
“Ye  are  clean,  but  not  all.”  That  was  the  fatal  barrier 
which  thwarted  the  longings  of  Christ  for  two  thousand 
years.  They  were  not  all  clean.  By  and  by  Judas  steals 
out  into  the  night,  and  Satan’s  great  program  of  opposition 
was  initiated. 

As  the  doctor  must  have  an  aseptic  surgical  field  for  his 
operation,  so  when  love  goes  out  to  reconstruct  the  world 
today  we  must  work  with  cleansed  tools  and  methods. 
Jesus  taught  these  disciples  to  love  their  fellow  men  and 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


190 

then  He  said,  “First  of  all  you  must  be  clean,  and  then  you 
can  go  out  to  serve/’  It  could  be  said  of  any  community 
that  the  Kingdom  of  God  might  be  reproduced  in  a  week  if 
it  were  not  for  this  one  fatal  phrase,  “Ye  are  clean,  but  not 
all.”  It  is  the  element  of  uncleanness  in  the  church  that 
checks  the  impetus  of  service,  that  weakens  every  effort 
to  build  up  a  social  order  of  those  who  love  God  and  who 
love  each  other.  For  all  of  us  asepsis  precedes  service. 
First  the  washing,  and  then  the  work.  I  have  met  men 
and  women  with  a  great  desire  to  do  something  for 
humanity,  yet  utterly  unwilling  to  pay  the  cost  of  that 
service  in  a  first  great  fundamental  act  of  putting  the  life 
right  with  God.  Before  you  can  do  anything  for  Him  or 
for  men  you  must  first  receive  the  forgiving  love  for  your 
own  life.  There  is  a  very  exquisite  picture  drawn  by  Mr. 
Browning,  a  picture  which  in  lovely  simile  reveals  to  me 
the  splendor  of  that  great  moment  when  the  human  will 
first  bends  to  God : 

“Such  a  starved  bank  of  moss 
Till,  that  May-morn, 

Blue  ran  the  flash  across: 

Violets  were  born. 

Sky — what  a  scowl  of  cloud 
Till,  near  and  far, 

Ray  on  ray  split  the  shroud: 

Splendid,  a  star ! 

World — how  it  walled  about 

Life  with  disgrace 

Till  God’s  own  smile  came  out: 

That  was  thy  face.” 

As  the  violets  peep  out  in  flash  of  beauty  on  the  weather¬ 
beaten  banks  of  moss  in  the  springtime,  as  the  star  peeps 


THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  HOUSE 


191 

out  beyond  the  scowling  bank  of  clouds  in  the  night,  so  is 
that  great  day  in  the  life  of  a  man  when  God’s  smiling 
face  first  glows  upon  him  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ. 
When  that  day  breaks  and  the  shadows  flee  away,  you  will 
thereafter  make  drudgery  divine.  Nothing  henceforth  will 
be  common  or  unclean.  Though  it  be  only  the  coarse 
towel  of  homely  service  you  will  in  truth  be  girt  with 
glory.  For  through  the  daily  dull  routine  there  will  be 
now  and  again  a  glimpse  of  that  wonderful  face  so  humble 
and  yet  so  majestic — the  face  of  the  Master  on  the  Throne 
who  became  the  Servant  in  the  House. 


XIV 


THE  TRAJECTORY  OF  EVIL 

Text  :  Then  the  lust,  when  it  hath  conceived,  beareth  sin :  and 
the  sin,  when  it  is  fullgrown,  bringeth  forth  death. 

— James  1:15 

The  nineteenth  century  gave  to  the  world  no  truer 
interpreter  of  human  life  than  Marian  Evans,  whose  pen 
name  was  George  Eliot.  Born  at  Arbury  Farm  in  War¬ 
wickshire  in  the  year  1819,  her  mother’s  death  brought  to 
%er  at  seventeen  heavy  responsibilities  as  caretaker  of  the 
household  and  comforter  of  a  lonely  father’s  sorrow. 
She  was  intensely  bookish,  intensely  serious,  and  I  fancy 
was  never  a  real  little  girl.  Trained  in  a  rigid  and  hard 
religious  atmosphere,  before  she  was  out  of  her  teens  she 
had  become  so  morbid  a  zealot  that  she  had  even  put  away 
pretty  dresses  because  she  counted  them  inconsistent  with 
her  religion.  And  this  for  a  girl  in  her  teens  will  be 
accounted  the  last  word  in  self-denial. 

At  the  age  of  twenty- four,  moving  with  her  father  to 
Coventry,  she  fell  in  with  a  group  of  so  called  “free¬ 
thinkers.”  These  were  men  and  women  of  liberal  views, 
of  literary  culture  and  of  some  knowledge  in  the  field  of 
philosophy.  Under  their  influence  she  came  shortly  to  a 
complete  change  of  religious  opinion.  She  broke  with 
orthodox  religion,  well-nigh  breaking  with  her  father,  a 
churchman  of  the  old  school. 

In  1844  she  undertook  the  translation  of  the  Life  of 


192 


THE  TRAJECTORY  OF  EVIL 


193 


Christ,  by  Strauss,  from  the  German  into  English.  She 
says  of  herself  that  she  became  “Strauss  sick.”  This 
German  rationalist,  in  his  theory  which  reduced  the  story 
of  Christ  to  a  collection  of  myths,  had  taken  away  her 
Lord,  and  she  knew  not  where  He  had  been  laid.  She 
moved  in  that  rare  group  of  scientists  and  literary  men, 
Herbert  Spencer,  Thomas  H.  Huxley,  Thomas  Carlyle, 
Harriet  Martineau,  and  particularly  the  historian  and 
philosopher,  George  Henry  Lewes. 

For  the  last  name  suggests  what  every  one  knows,  that 
George  Eliot  not  only  broke  with  traditional  orthodoxy 
but  also  with  traditional  morality.  Lewes  was  ugly  and 
brilliant, — as  she  herself  called  him,  a  “little  edition  of 
Mirabeau.”  He  had  been  married  to  an  unworthy  woman 
who  had  left  him.  After  awhile  she  came  back  and  Lewes 
forgave  her.  Then  she  left  him  again,  and  under  the 
somewhat  curious  and  intricate  forms  of  English  law,  one 
could  not  get  a  divorce  if  one’s  partner  had  come  back  and 
had  once  been  forgiven.  Legally,  Lewes  was  tied  for  life 
to  a  faithless  woman  who  had  long  since  gone  away  from 
him.  Actually,  Lewes  and  Marian  Evans  were  deeply  in 
love  with  each  other.  What  to  do?  They  cut  the  Gordian 
knot  by  joining  their  lives  together  as  husband  and  wife, 
without  the  sanction  of  either  church  or  state.  If  ever 
the  word  “excusable”  could  be  used  for  such  a  relation 
perhaps  this  was  the  time.  There  can  be  no  question  that 
these  two  were  deeply  in  love  and  that  they  were  true  to 
each  other.  Nevertheless,  if  every  man  and  every  woman 
were  to  do  the  same  thing,  taking  into  their  own  hands  the 
judgment  of  sufficient  reasons,  the  whole  foundation  of 
society  would  be  undermined.  George  Lewes  and  George 
Eliot  owed  it  to  society  to  show  self-restraint  and  self- 


194 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


denial  because  they  were  great  intellects  and,  if  for  no 
other  reason,  on  the  principle  of  noblesse  oblige. 

Moreover,  George  Eliot  was  the  last  woman  in  the 
world  who  should  have  attempted  to  live  in  open  defiance 
of  conventional  morals.  She  was  so  sensitive  that  an  un¬ 
favorable  review  of  her  writings  would  send  her  to  a  sick 
bed  for  a  week.  And  while  with  her  head  she  might  reject 
Christian  standards,  her  heart  never  got  away  from 
Christian  instincts.  She  died,  it  is  said,  with  Thomas  a 
Kempis’  “Imitation  of  Christ”  in  her  hands.  She  never 
abandoned  the  Bible,  though  she  confessed  that  Mr.  Lewes 
did  not  care  much  about  it,  but  saw  no  harm  in  her  reading 
it.  She  said :  “I  suppose  no  wisdom  the  world  will  ever 
find  out  will  make  Paul’s  words  obsolete — ‘Now  abide/ 
etc.,  ‘but  the  greatest  of  these  is  Charity/  ”  She  declares : 
“I  have  too  profound  a  conviction  of  the  efficacy  that  lies 
in  all  sincere  faith,  and  the  spiritual  blight  that  comes  with 
no  faith,  to  have  any  negative  propagandism  in  me.  In 
fact,  I  have  very  little  sympathy  with  freethinkers  as  a 
class,  and  have  lost  all  interest  in  mere  antagonism  to 
religious  doctrines.  I  care  only  to  know,  if  possible,  the 
lasting  meaning  that  lies  in  all  religious  doctrine  from  the 
beginning  till  now.” 

I  fear  it  must  be  said  of  her  as  has  been  said  of  Burns, 
that  she  was  not  so  much  helped  by  religion  as  haunted  by 
it.  No  one  can  read  between  the  lines  of  her  tragic  story 
without  realizing  that  she  suffered  intensely,  terribly,  be¬ 
cause  of  her  twofold  break  with  Christian  codes  of  moral 
conduct.  She  never  got  away  from  her  mistakes.  Like 
evil  chickens,  they  came  home  to  roost.  Our  greatest 
^  works  are  born  out  of  our  bitter  experiences.  And  it  was 
because  she  knew  how  inevitably  suffering  follows  hard 


THE  TRAJECTORY  OF  EVIL 


195 


upon  mistakes,  how  terribly  true  it  is  that  whatsoever  a 
man  soweth  that  shall  he  also  reap,  that  her  greatest  book, 
one  of  the  greatest  novels  in  all  literature,  should  embody 
this  supreme  principle  which  she  had  learned  in  the  bitter¬ 
ness  of  her  own  experience.  This  was  her  story  of  Flor¬ 
entine  life  which  she  named  “Romola.” 

It  might  be  an  inspiration  in  this  easy-going  age  to 
note  how  a  really  great  artist  wrote  a  book.  She  con¬ 
ceived  the  idea  early  in  1861.  It  was  the  middle  of  1863 
before  it  was  finished.  She  read  literally  hundreds  of 
books  on  Florentine  life  and  characters.  And  let  it  be 
remarked  that  she  refused  an  offer  of  ten  thousand  pounds 
from  a  publishing  firm  because  it  would  involve  hurrying 
the  work  too  much  and  sacrificing  her  art  for  money. 

Here  is  the  bare  outline  of  the  story.  Tito  Melema,  a 
beautiful  young  Greek,  escaped  from  shipwreck,  landed 
in  Florence  with  a  treasure  of  jewels,  a  lovely  face,  and 
melting  gift  of  speech.  He  readily  makes  friends  with 
Nello  the  barber,  Domenico  the  goldsmith,  Cennini  the 
book  printer.  But  on  first  glimpse  Piero  di  Cosimo,  the 
artist,  cries,  “Young  man,  I  am  painting  a  picture  of  a 
traitor,  and  I  should  be  glad  if  you’d  give  me  a  sitting.” 
Protests  the  barber,  “Piero,  thou  art  the  most  extraor¬ 
dinary  compound  of  humors  and  fancies  ever  packed  in 
a  human  skin.  What  trick  wilt  thou  play  with  the  fine 
visage  of  this  young  scholar  to  make  it  suit  thy  traitor?” 
“Ay,  Nello,”  said  the  painter,  “and  if  thy  tongue  can  leave 
off  its  everlasting  chirping  long  enough  for  thy  under¬ 
standing  to  consider  the  matter,  thou  mayst  see  that  thou 
hast  just  shown  the  reason  why  his  face  will  suit  my 
traitor.  A  perfect  traitor  should  have  a  face  which  vice 
can  write  no  marks  on — lips  that  will  lie  with  a  dimpled 


196 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


smile — eyes  of  such  agatelike  brightness  and  depth  that 
no  infamy  can  dull  them — cheeks  that  will  rise  from  a 
murder  and  not  look  haggard.”  And  the  wary  artist, 
stuffing  his  ears  with  cotton  because  he  knew  the  barber, 
settled  back  in  his  chair  for  the  trimming  of  his  beard. 

Now  Tito,  the  beautiful,  in  passing  through  the  market 
place  had  come  upon  a  lovely  little  peasant  girl  named 
Tessa.  Impelled  by  his  two  great  appetites  for  food  and 
flirtation,  with  fair  face  and  ingratiating  manners,  he  had 
stolen  from  her  at  once  a  breakfast  and  her  heart.  But 
soon  forgetting  both,  he  went  out  to  make  his  way  by  his 
beauty  and  his  wits  in  the  city  of  Florence.  Selling  his 
jewels  for  a  princely  sum  to  the  goldsmith,  he  secured 
an  introduction  to  old  Bardi,  a  scholar  and  an  aristocrat, 
who  in  his  blind  old  age  was  dependent  upon  his  beautiful 
young  daughter,  Romola,  who  was  eyes  to  him  and  hands, 
and  a  whole  world  of  love  besides.  Tito  became  the 
trusted  secretary  of  old  Bardi,  and  as  was  inevitable,  like 
the  law  of  gravity  or  any  other  unfailing  sequence,  the  two 
young  folks  fell  madly  in  love. 

But  meantime  Tito’s  conscience  had  not  been  easy.  His 
mind  goes  back  to  his  childhood  days.  He  remembers 
how,  as  a  little  boy,  a  beggar,  ragged,  starved,  dirty,  he 
had  been  picked  up  by  a  fine  old  Neapolitan  gentleman  and 
scholar,  Baldassarre  Calvo.  He  recalled  how  this  man 
had  adopted  him,  how  he  had  lavished  upon  him  time  and 
money  and  love  and  training.  The  old  man,  his  foster 
father,  had  been  in  the  shipwreck  too.  He  might  have 
been  killed,  but  he  might  have  been  saved.  Should  not 
Tito  take  his  money,  which  belonged  to  the  foster  father, 
and  go  back  and  hunt  until  he  found  him?  He  ought  to, 
perhaps,  but  on  the  whole  it  would  be  vastly  more  pleasant 


THE  TRAJECTORY  OF  EVIL 


197 


to  stay  where  he  was.  There  would  be  awkward  explana¬ 
tions  to  be  made,  for  he  had  told  no  one  that  these  jewels 
were  not  his  own.  Tito  quiets  his  conscience  by  asserting 
that  his  father  is  dead  or  that  the  search  for  him  is  hope¬ 
less.  But  one  day  he  meets  a  friar  on  the  street,  who  says, 
“Pardon  me,  but — from  your  face  and  your  ring — is  not 
your  name  Tito  Melema?”  “Yes.”  “Then  I  shall  fulfill 
my  commission.”  And  in  his  hands  he  places  a  parchment 
containing  this  message :  “I  am  sold  for  a  slave.  I  think 
they  are  going  to  take  me  to  Antioch.  The  gems  alone 
will  serve  to  ransom  me.” 

Now  the  young  man  knew  that  his  father  doubtless 
lived,  that  he  was  a  slave  in  a  foreign  land,  and  that  Tito 
had  it  in  his  power  to  set  him  free.  But  the  poison  of 
covetousness,  of  pleasure-loving  selfishness,  had  wrought 
its  deadly  work.  Had  he  known  this  at  the  first,  he  might 
have  done  his  duty.  Now,  with  his  heart  set  on  Romola, 
on  wealth  and  ease  and  fame,  he  reasons  away  all  claims 
of  duty.  The  only  hindrance  was  the  fear  that  the  monk 
might  reveal  his  secret.  He  goes  to  the  monastery  and 
inquires  for  this  monk,  and  receives  this  answer:  “Fra 
Luca?  ah,  he  has  gone  to  Fiesole — to  the  Dominican  mon¬ 
astery  there.  He  was  taken  on  a  litter  in  the  cool  of  the 
morning.  The  poor  brother  is  very  ill.  Could  you  leave 
a  message  for  him?”  “Thanks,  my  business  can  wait.” 
Tito  turned  away  with  a  sense  of  relief.  “This  friar  is 
not  likely  to  live,”  he  said.  “I  saw  he  was  worn  to  a 
shadow.”  And  believing  his  secret  safe  he  hardened 
his  heart  and  played  the  game  of  selfishness  to  the  end. 

But  now  a  new  danger  arose.  This  Fra  Luca,  this 
dying  monk,  was  none  other  than  the  long  lost  son  of 
old  Bardi,  and  the  brother  of  Romola.  And  when  the  girl, 


1 98 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


against  her  father’s  wishes,  goes  to  visit  her  dying  brother, 
Tito  thinks  the  game  is  up.  He  will  tell  his  sister  of  Tito’s 
treachery,  and  all  hope  of  his  marriage  will  be  forever 
gone.  In  a  mood  of  reckless  despair  Tito  pushes  his  way 
through  the  vast  crowds  of  the  Florentine  festal  day.  He 
meets  little  Tessa,  renews  with  her  his  flirtation,  hurries 
her  through  a  mock  marriage,  which  the  poor  innocent 
child  thought  to  be  genuine,  charges  her  with  terrible 
threats  to  keep  the  whole  transaction  secret ;  and  then  finds 
that  all  his  anxiety  has  been  useless,  because  the  monk  has 
died  without  revealing  to  his  sister  the  treachery  of  her 
lover. 

Now  ensues  a  time  of  outward  prosperity.  Tito  marries 
Romola.  He  lives  a  double  life.  Upon  the  hillside  in  a 
little  cottage,  under  the  charge  of  a  deaf  old  woman,  live 
little  Tessa  and  her  child.  Tito  waxes  rich  and  powerful. 
He  makes  his  way  step  by  step  up  the  political  ladder. 
And  all  goes  well  until  one  day  in  the  streets  of  Florence 
he  comes  face  to  face  with  an  escaped  prisoner,  an  old 
man,  haggard,  worn,  starved.  It  was  Baldassarre,  his 
wronged  father.  There  was  still  a  chance  for  this  man  to 
do  right.  There  was  still  a  chance  to  own  his  father,  to 
beg  his  forgiveness.  “This  is  another  escaped  prisoner,” 
said  one.  “Who  is  he,  I  wonder?”  And  with  steady  eyes 
Tito  took  the  final  plunge.  “Some  madman ,  surely ”  he 
replied. 

After  that,  fear  walked  arm  in  arm  with  sin.  Tito 
bought  a  coat  of  mail  to  protect  himself  from  the  dreaded 
knife  thrust  in  the  dark.  But  no  coat  of  mail  could  keep 
out  the  sickening  horror  that  grew  and  grew  in  his  inner 
life.  He  must  get  away  from  Florence,  and  to  do  so, 
without  the  knowledge  of  Romola,  he  sells  all  the  splendid 


THE  TRAJECTORY  OF  EVIL 


199 


literary  treasures  of  his  father-in-law,  now  dead — though 
his  wife’s  solemn  pledge  to  her  father  was  never  to  part 
with  them.  The  eyes  of  Romola  from  this  time  on  were 
opened  more  and  more  to  his  treachery  and  crime.  She 
comes  at  last  to  meet  Baldassarre,  the  wronged  father,  and 
then  to  know  of  Tessa,  the  wronged  girl.  Farther  and 
farther  apart  they  drift,  wider  and  wider  the  chasm  be¬ 
tween  husband  and  wife,  tighter  and  tighter  the  coils  of 
danger  around  the  evil  man.  In  the  troubled  politics  of 
the  time  he  plays  with  both  parties  and  betrays  both.  He 
joins  in  a  plot  to  murder  the  great  preacher  Savonarola, 
and  then  when  threatened  with  discovery  saves  himself 
by  betrayal  of  his  own  comrades.  There  is  not  a  crime  in 
the  catalogue  to  which  he  will  not  stoop.  And  all  the 
while  Baldassarre,  weak  and  helpless,  follows  with  one 
great  implacable  purpose  to  work  vengeance.  At  last 
Tito  makes  every  plan  to  leave  Florence,  which  has 
grown  too  hot  for  him.  Caught  by  a  crazed  and  angry 
mob,  he  is  borne  across  the  Arno  upon  the  Vecchian 
Bridge.  In  the  very  middle  of  the  bridge  he  suddenly 
leaps  into  the  dark  waters  below.  It  was  his  last  chance 
of  safety,  and  it  looked  like  a  good  chance.  Swimming 
far  down  the  river,  he  landed,  spent  and  exhausted,  on  the 
bank,  to  look — into  the  glaring  eyes  of  Baldassarre. 

Hours  later,  when  witnesses  at  last  came,  they  found 
Tito  lying  dead  upon  the  bank,  and  beside  him  the  dead 
body  of  a  strange,  wild  old  man.  And  the  cold,  stiffened 
fingers  of  the  old  man  were  still  clutched  around  Tito’s 
throat ! 

And  this  is  the  trajectory  of  evil.  The  word  trajectory 
signifies  the  curve  which  any  object  describes  in  the  air. 
The  trajectory  of  a  bullet  is  that  curve  which  the  bullet 


200 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


will  follow  as  a  resultant  of  the  force  behind  the  bullet  and 
the  resistance  of  air  and  gravity.  Modern  gunnery  practice 
is  now  a  matter  of  pure  mathematics.  Given  a  certain 
force,  you  know  what  curve  it  will  describe,  how  far  it  will 
go,  and  where  it  will  end.  If  you  do  not  hear  a  three-inch 
shell  before  it  hits  you,  it  has  not  traveled  two  thousand 
yards.  If  you  hear  it,  it  has  traveled  more  than  three 
thousand  yards,  for  it  does  not  begin  to  sing  until  the  shell 
is  traveling  more  slowly  than  sound.  In  a  word,  the 
trajectory  of  a  missile  is  as  definite  and  sure  as  the  law  of 
gravity. 

Now  George  Eliot  has  done  this  thing  in  “Romola.” 
She  has  described  the  curve  of  sin.  She  has  given  us  the 
trajectory  of  evil.  She  has  shown  us  how,  from  small 
beginnings,  sin  propagates  itself  and  goes  on  and  on, 
widening  and  deepening,  cursing  everything  it  touches, 
until  not  Tito  alone,  but  all  the  rest — Baldassarre  his 
father,  and  even  the  great  priest  Savonarola  himself — are 
darkened  with  the  shadow  of  that  sin ;  and  we  come  to  see 
that  it  is  in  some  sense  a  reflection  of  the  crime  of  Tito 
when  Savonarola,  under  the  torture,  gives  up  his  faith  and 
cries,  “I  will  confess.  I  will  confess.”  Romola,  saved 
through  love  and  suffering,  takes  poor  little  Tessa  and  her 
two  children  to  her  mother  heart,  and  explains  to  Lillo,  the 
boy:  “There  was  a  man  to  whom  I  was  very  near,  who 
made  almost  every  one  fond  of  him,  for  he  was  young, 
and  clever,  and  beautiful,  and  his  manners  to  all  were 
gentle  and  kind.  I  believe,  when  I  first  knew  him,  he 
never  thought  of  anything  cruel  and  base.  But  because  he 
tried  to  slip  away  from  everything  that  was  unpleasant, 
and  cared  for  nothing  else  so  much  as  his  own  safety,  he 
came  at  last  to  commit  some  of  the  basest  deeds — such  as 


THE  TRAJECTORY  OF  EVIL 


201 


make  men  infamous.  He  denied  his  father,  and  left  him 
to  misery;  he  betrayed  every  trust  that  was  reposed  in 
him,  that  he  might  keep  himself  safe  and  get  rich  and 
prosperous.  Yet  calamity  overtook  him.”  And  this  is 
an  illustration  in  an  extended  way  of  the  curve  which 
James  has  drawn  in  a  brief  way.  “Lust,  when  it  hath 
conceived,  beareth  sin :  and  the  sin,  when  it  is  fullgrown, 
bringeth  forth  death.” 

Beware  of  the  beginnings  of  sin !  Beware  of  the  first 
compromise!  Beware  of  the  primal  tendency  to  dally 
with  moral  principles,  to  take  the  lines  of  least  resistance, 
to  lower  our  standards  for  the  sake  of  ease  and  popularity 
and  luxury !  At  the  beginning  the  curve  looks  small,  but 
it  grows  inevitably  toward  the  horrible  result. 

And  this  tragic  plunge  into  the  abyss  is  the  only  outlook 
for  humanity  in  its  own  unaided  powers.  The  circle  that 
starts  with  sin  ends  in  death  as  surely  as  the  night  follows 
the  day.  “Be  not  deceived ;  God  is  not  mocked  :  for  what¬ 
soever  a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap.” 

“Though  the  mills  of  God  grind  slowly,  yet  they  grind 
exceeding  small ; 

Though  with  patience  he  stands  waiting,  with  exactness 
grinds  he  all.” 

The  wisest  of  the  Greeks  knew  that — those  mighty  trage¬ 
dies  of  theirs  began  with  sin  and  culminated  in  death.  It 
was  all  inevitable  as  pure  mathematics.  Shakespeare 
knew  that.  Richard  and  Brutus  and  the  Macbeths  and  n/ 
Hamlet’s  uncle  and  Iago  stand  as  grim  signposts  pointing 
the  easy  descent  into  the  abyss.  Always  even-handed 
justice  commends  the  ingredients  of  the  poisoned  chalice 
to  the  sinner’s  own  lips.  The  sadness  of  it  is  that  the 


202 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


Greek  dropped  the  curtain  with  the  death  of  the  sinner — 
that  was  the  final  word  in  his  tragedy.  And  Shakespeare, 
too,  does  that.  In  his  somber  tragedies  you  may  hear  that 
grim  note  of  fate  knocking  at  the  door,  the  note  which 
sounds  through  Beethoven’s  greatest  symphony.  Fate 
follows  hard.  Nemesis  pursues.  The  circle  coils  around 
us  and  there  is  no  eye  to  pity  and  no  hand  to  save. 

Turn  from  all  these,  I  entreat  you,  to  One  wiser  and 
more  powerful  than  all  the  tragedians,  ancient  and  mod¬ 
ern.  There  is  One  who  is  supreme  over  this  curve  of  sin 
and  death  which  encoils  these  poor  lives  of  ours.  “It  is 
he  that  sitteth  above  the  circle  of  the  earth.”  He  alone 
can  arrest  the  sickening  downward  sag  and  sweep  with 
which  evil  plunges  us  to  swift  retribution. 

He  was  a  Hebrew  as  Tito  was  a  Greek.  Yet  he  was 
Greek,  too,  in  His  love  of  beauty.  The  old  artists  have 
doubtless  erred  in  making  Him  feminine  in  comeliness. 
He  was  a  carpenter,  with  gnarled  hands  and  rugged  face. 
Tito  may  have  been  more  smooth  and  fair  in  outward 
seeming.  But  within  this  young  man  was  a  radiance  that 
common  folk  and  little  children  and  helpless,  sick,  sorrow¬ 
ing  people  looked  upon  with  awe.  To  them  this  young 
man  was  more  fair  than  all  the  sons  of  men.  Grace  flowed 
from  His  lips.  He  too  had  to  choose  between  the  flowery 
path  of  pleasure  and  the  hard,  stony  path  of  duty  and 
sacrifice.  As  Tito,  seeking  to  save  his  life,  lost  it,  Jesus, 
losing  His  life,  saved  it.  Tito  knew  the  grim  defeat  of 
selfish  hate;  Jesus  the  supreme  victory  of  self-sacrificing 
love. 

Modern  medical  practice  has  been  revolutionized  by 
the  principle  of  antitoxin.  What  is  that  principle?  In  a 
word,  it  is  the  transfer  of  victory  over  disease  from  one 


THE  TRAJECTORY  OF  EVIL  203 

organism  to  another.  It  means  that  a  body  facing  defeat 
and  death  may  be  saved  by  the  victorious  forces  of  another 
body  which  has  triumphed  over  defeat  and  death.  And 
we  are  saved  by  the  life  of  Christ  who  won  the  victory 
against  the  forces  of  sin  and  death  which  drove  Tito  to 
defeat. 

He  frees  us  from  this  awful  gravitation  of  guilt  because 
He  Himself  has  known  its  grip,  has  felt  its  agony  and 
triumphed  by  suffering  its  utmost  power.  On  the  Cross 
He  swung  far  out  on  the  curve  of  that  fearful  experience, 
and  tasted  death  for  every  man.  He  who  knew  no  sin  was 
made  sin  for  us,  that  we  might  be  the  righteousness  of 
God  in  Him.  And  so  it  came  to  pass  that  He  can  lift 
men  above  the  dreadful  drag  of  sin  and  death.  “I,  if 
I  be  lifted  up  from  the  earth,  will  draw  all  men  unto 
myself.”  Beneath  the  deep  infernal  is  the  love  eternal. 
Its  upward  surge  is  the  strongest  force  in  the  universe. 
Commit  yourself  unhesitatingly  to  that  mighty  rising 
tide  of  saving  grace.  Turn  with  confidence  from  the  fate 
of  Tito  to  the  feet  of  Christ. 

“Through  all  depths  of  sin  and  loss 
Drops  the  plummet  of  the  Cross; 

Never  yet  abyss  was  found 
Deeper  than  his  love  can  sound.” 


XV 


THE  CROSSED  HANDS  OF  BLESSING 
A  Thanksgiving  Sermon 

Text:  By  faith  Jacob,  when  he  was  dying,  blessed  each  of  the 
sons  of  Joseph;  and  worshipped,  leaning  upon  the  top  of 
his  staff. — Hebrews  11:21. 

If  anyone  were  to  ask  what  is  the  most  important  single 
thing  to  remember  on  Thanksgiving  Day,  I  should  have 
but  one  answer.  It  would  doubtless  sound  like  a  paradox, 
but  it  would  be,  I  think,  the  truth.  The  most  important 
single  thing  for  us  to  remember  this  morning  is  that  we 
are  Christians  and  not  pagans.  For  the  pagan  world,  too, 
had  its  thanksgiving.  It  had  feasts  and  games  in  honor  of 
the  gods  who  had  bestowed  the  blessings  of  the  year.  But 
this  pagan  joy  and  even  gratitude  for  the  good  things 
of  life  was  based  upon  material  realization,  not  upon 
spiritual  anticipation.  It  walked  by  sight  and  not  by 
faith.  Accordingly  paganism  had  its  message  only  for 
the  noontime  of  prosperity.  There  was  neither  joy  nor 
gratitude  when  everything  went  “dead  wrong.”  Dr. 
Lyman  Beecher  used  to  say  that  it  was  easy  to  believe 
in  a  benevolent  providence  when  the  wind  was  not  in  the 
east.  Paganism  never  believed  anything  when  the  wind 
was  in  the  east.  Its  joy  and  gratitude  were  always  for  the 
sunshine,  never  for  the  cloudy  day. 

But  Christian  thanksgiving  walks  by  faith,  not  by  sight. 
It  is  not  glad  because  of  misfortunes.  That  would  be 


204 


THE  CROSSED  HANDS  OF  BLESSING  205 


very  unhuman  and  very  foolish,  and  when  confessed  usu¬ 
ally  very  hypocritical.  Christian  thanksgiving  is  clear¬ 
headed  enough  to  know  that  in  spite  of  all  the  illusions 
of  Christian  Science  everything  is  not  good.  But  it  is 
grateful  because,  while  with  clear  eyes  it  sees  that  not 
all  things  are  good,  yet  with  deep  and  vital  faith  it  recog¬ 
nizes  that  in  the  end  all  things  do  work  together  and 
work  out  toward  good  to  them  who  love  God  and  who 
are  the  called  according  to  his  purpose.  So  it  comes  to 
pass  that  Christian  thanksgiving,  without  any  foolish  il¬ 
lusions  or  self-hypnotism,  can  lift  itself  to  God  even  when 
the  wind  is  in  the  east,  and  voice  its  thanksgiving  on  the 
cloudy  day — can  raise  its  hymn  of  rejoicing  in  spite  of  the 
croakers,  and  resolve  the  minor  music  of  a  sin-sick  world 
into  the  glorious  major  music  that  rings  around  the  throne 
of  God. 

“Lord,  I  give  thanks. 

Last  year  Thou  knowest  my  best  ambitions  failed, — 

My  back  with  scourgings  of  defeat  was  flailed, — 

My  eyes  oft  felt  the  sharp  salt  wash  of  tears, — 

No  guerdon  blessed  the  tireless  toil  of  years, — 

Fast  in  the  stocks  my  helpless  feet  were  tied, — 

Yet  in  my  woes  Thou  didst  with  me  abide. 

Lord,  I  give  thanks.” 

Here,  for  our  Thanksgiving  morning,  is  an  impressive 
picture  of  what  the  Christian’s  attitude  should  be.  Look 
at  this  old  man.  He  is  engaged  in  worship, — thankful, 
grateful  worship, — and  in  blessing, — regal,  rejoicing 
blessing.  Yet  who  is  he?  Only  a  little  while  before, 
standing  in  the  presence  of  the  king,  he  had  given  his  own 
pathetic  autobiography :  “The  days  of  the  years  of  my 
pilgrimage  are  a  hundred  and  thirty  years :  few  and  evil 


206 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


have  been  the  days  of  the  years  of  my  life,  and  they 
have  not  attained  unto  the  days  of  the  years  of  the  life 
of  my  fathers  in  the  days  of  their  pilgrimage.”  His  am¬ 
bitions  had  failed.  His  splendid  scheme  of  life  had  fallen 
like  a  house  of  children’s  blocks.  He  had  looked  for  a 
great  Promised  Land,  and  instead  he  was  now  a  pilgrim, 
a  wanderer  and  an  exile.  He  had  sinned,  and  in  his  old 
age  his  sins  had  come  back,  like  evil  birds,  to  roost.  Now 
in  his  last  years,  instead  of  a  ruler  in  a  great  Promised 
Land  he  is  a  stranger  in  a  strange  land,  a  pensioner,  de¬ 
pendent  on  charity,  on  the  whim  of  a  heathen  king.  Per¬ 
haps  the  old  man  might  be  impelled  to  say  that  he  for  one 
had  little  to  be  thankful  for;  but,  bedridden  and  dying, 
with  the  glow  of  a  divine  fire  within  him,  he  leans  upon 
the  top  of  his  staff  and  from  a  flaming  heart  of  gratitude 
pours  forth  his  adoration  and  his  blessing. 

Not  only  have  great,  rich,  glorious  blessings  been  re¬ 
ceived  ;  but  such  is  their  overflow  that  he  has  them  to 
give  away.  This  splendid  old  pauper  calls  before  him  the 
two  sons  of  the  mighty  premier  of  Egypt,  and  bestows  his 
bequests  upon  them  like  a  lord.  It  is  said  of  John  Wesley 
that  when  he  died,  though  during  his  life  he  had  handled 
thousands  of  pounds,  he  left  nothing  except  two  old 
spoons  in  London,  two  old  spoons  in  Bristol,  a  battered 
silver  teapot;  and  the  Methodist  Church.  Well,  this  old 
man  had  no  worldly  goods  to  bestow,  but  he  had  a  price¬ 
less  spiritual  covenant-blessing  to  hand  down.  When  great 
Beethoven  was  slipping  into  the  shadows  midway  between 
life  and  death,  having  very  little  of  this  worlds  goods, 
and  bitterly  disappointed  in  the  unworthiness  of  his  own 
relatives,  he  made  the  shortest  and  in  some  respects  the 
greatest  bequest  of  all  history  when  he  said  of  Schubert, 


THE  CROSSED  HANDS  OF  BLESSING  207 

“Franz  has  my  soul.”  The  most  priceless  heritage  which 
a  man  can  give  to  those  who  come  after  is  the  heritage 
of  a  great  soul. 

“So  when  a  great  man  dies, 

For  years  beyond  our  ken, 

The  light  he  leaves  behind  him  lies 
Upon  the  paths  of  men.” 

I  am  holding  this  scene  before  you  today  because  in 
that  hard,  crude  old  age  it  was  so  typically  Christian ; 
because  in  it  a  man  has  nothing  and  yet  everything;  be¬ 
cause  in  circumstances  of  adversity  greater  than  that  faced 
by  any  man  or  woman  in  this  audience  he  is  yet  over¬ 
flowing  with  worship  and  thankfulness  in  the  realization 
of  the  fullness  of  God  that  flowed  around  his  incomplete¬ 
ness;  and  of  God’s  rest  that  encompassed  his  restlessness. 

Here,  then,  is  the  thanksgiving  of  faith. 

It  was  the  faith  of  a  forward  look.  He  was  not  in  the 
Promised  Land  and  never  would  be,  but  by  faith  he  was 
already  the  possessor  of  the  promised  land.  He  was  a 
prisoner  in  a  company  of  bondsmen,  yet  he  calmly  dis¬ 
posed  of  a  country  upon  which  neither  he  nor  his  family 
had  any  claim  whatsoever  except  the  promises  of  God. 
Many  years  ago  a  white  man  went  down  into  Patagonia, 
and  after  awhile  proclaimed  himself  the  “King  of  Pata¬ 
gonia.”  But  he  was  driven  from  the  country,  and  long 
years  after,  when  he  came  to  die,  he  solemnly  willed  to 
a  friend  his  kingdom  of  Patagonia.  That  was  not  more 
presumptuous  than  the  act  of  this  old  man  who  in  his  be¬ 
quests  disposes  of  a  kingdom  which  he  possesses  only  in 
imagination.  It  would  have  been  nothing  more  than  pre¬ 
sumption  had  it  not  been  for  the  promise  of  God.  But 
his  was  that  faith  which  is  the  substance  of  things  hoped 


1 


208 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


for,  the  evidence  of  things  not  seen.  Many  years  ago  I 
saw  Richard  Mansfield  impersonate  Napoleon,  and  shall 
never  forget  that  thrilling  death  scene  in  which  the  form¬ 
er  emperor,  an  abject  prisoner,  surrounded  by  guards 
and  prison  walls,  none  so  poor  to  do  him  reverence,  never¬ 
theless  met  death  like  a  conqueror,  clutching  in  his 
hand  the  map  of  Europe.  So  Jacob,  uncrowned  and  dis¬ 
possessed,  died  clutching  in  his  hand  the  map  of  Palestine. 

The  Christian’s  thanksgiving,  the  Christian’s  worship, 
the  Christian’s  blessing  this  day  must  be  that  of  the  for¬ 
ward  look.  When  Harry  Lauder  lost  his  only  son,  when 
the  sweet  light  of  his  life  was  drowned  in  darkness,  he 
said  there  was  nothing  left  but  drink,  despair,  or  God. 
But  Harry  Lauder  laid  hold  on  the  garment  hem  of  the 
Infinite  and  found  peace — yes,  by  the  forward  look  of 
faith  found  joy.  That  is  the  substance  of  our  universal 
thanksgiving  today.  If  you  can  be  grateful  for  prosper¬ 
ity,  for  material  blessings,  for  dreams  realized  and  am¬ 
bitions  fulfilled,  then  thank  God  for  it  and  mingle  trem¬ 
bling  with  your  mirth.  But  if  you  cannot  do  these  things 
Thanksgiving  is  for  you  as  well,  through  the  forward 
look  of  faith.  In  the  eighth  circle  of  the  Inferno  Dante 
pictures  for  us  the  doom  of  the  false  prophets.  Their 
eternal  penalty  was  to  have  their  heads  set  looking  eter¬ 
nally  backward  while  their  feet  were  eternally  moving  for¬ 
ward.  This  is  no  day  for  the  false  prophets  of  evil  with 
their  faces  backward  while  we  are  moving  forward  toward 
the  Promised  Land.  This  is  a  day  for  the  forward  look, 
“breast  and  back  as  either  should  be,”  looking  for  and 
hastening  unto  the  better  day  that  is  to  be. 

It  is  worth  while  to  note  that  the  forward  look  of 
Jacob’s  thanksgiving  reached  out  not  only  to  the  Promised 


THE  CROSSED  HANDS  OF  BLESSING  209 


Land,  but  into  the  heavenly  land  as  well.  The  command 
which  he  gave  that  his  body  was  to  be  taken  some  day 
into  Canaan  reflected  that  ancient  view  that  the  welfare 
and  immortality  of  the  soul  was  connected  with  a  proper 
and  honorable  burial  of  the  body.  The  old  man’s  romance 
was  one  of  two  worlds.  Perhaps  he  did  not  clearly  ana¬ 
lyze  his  own  instincts,  but  it  is  quite  certain  that  in  this 
grateful  outrush  of  worship  and  thanksgiving  there  was 
the  sense,  as  Mr.  Darwin  has  put  it,  that  “there  is  more 
to  man  than  the  breath  of  his  body.”  And  it  may  be  that 
for  some  here  today  the  only  outrush  of  true  thankful¬ 
ness  will  be  that  which  sees  the  romance  of  two  worlds 
and  grasps  the  hope  “which  we  have  as  an  anchor  of  the 
soul,  a  hope  both  sure  and  steadfast  and  entering  into  that 
which  is  within  the  veil.”  But  this  much  is  certain,  that 
every  child  of  God  with  a  forward  look  of  faith  can  see 
the  better  day  and  be  glad. 

Now  this  was  more  than  the  faith  of  the  forward  look. 
It  was  the  faith  of  the  crossed  hands.  You  remember  the 
human  setting  here.  You  recall  how  Joseph  and  Jacob 
had  their  own  ideas  as  to  how  the  blessings  of  God  should 
be  bestowed.  They  wanted  God’s  benefits,  and  they 
wanted  them  in  the  proper  and  conventional  and  orthodox 
fashion,  according  to  their  own  prearranged  and  precon¬ 
ceived  schedule.  Most  of  us  want  our  blessings  that  way. 
Many  of  our  prayers  present  to  God  a  blank  form,  con¬ 
taining  the  proper  order  in  which  our  blessings  should  be 
received,  and  a  courteous  request,  “Please  sign  here.”  We 
want  to  dictate  the  way  in  which  God  should  bless  us; 
we  want  the  overflowings  of  his  grace  to  come  through 
the  channels  which  we  have  digged.  Now  it  was  the 
proper  and  orthodox  and  conventional  thing  that  the 


210 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


older  son,  Manasseh,  should  have  the  first  blessing,  and 
the  younger  son,  Ephraim,  should  have  the  second  bless¬ 
ing.  And  Joseph  arranged  it  that  way  and  said  to  his 
father,  and  through  him  to  the  Lord,  “Kindly  sign  here.” 
But  a  mysterious  power  moves  the  trembling  hands  of  the 
old  man.  A  force  that  he  cannot  resist  or  control  impels 
him  to  cross  his  hands  and  put  his  right  hand  on  the 
younger  son  and  the  left  hand  on  the  older  son.  Now 
Joseph  was  greatly  distressed.  The  blessings  were  com¬ 
ing,  but  not  in  the  way  that  he  had  expected  or  planned. 
He  protested  about  it,  but  to  no  avail.  The  hands 
of  blessing  that  day  were  crossed  hands. 

Sidney  Lanier,  the  poet,  in  his  essay  on  The  Theory  of 
Music,  develops  the  idea  of  crossing  or  opposition  as  the 
basis  of  music.  It  is  caused,  he  says,  by  forces  acting  in 
crossed  directions,  it  is  the  hand  striking  the  harp,  it  is 
the  bow  crossing  the  violin  string  that  brings  the  melody. 
And  the  music  of  life  comes  crosswise. 

We  thought,  a  few  years  ago,  that  a  great  world  war 
was  impossible.  Suddenly  the  force  of  events  struck 
rudely  across  our  preconceived  notions  and  the  most  tragic 
war  of  history  blazed  out.  Then  we  said,  “We,  at  least, 
can  be  at  peace ;  we  are  across  the  Atlantic ;  we  are  safely 
ensconced  behind  our  natural  barriers  in  leagues  of  ocean 
water ;  we  can  never  be  touched  by  the  fire  that  is  blazing 
throughout  the  world.”  Once  again  the  force  of  events 
struck  our  fondest  hopes  crosswise,  and  we  found  our¬ 
selves  engulfed  in  that  mighty  conflagration.  And  then 
we  said,  “Even  if  we  must  bear  this  awful  cross  of  war 
we  shall  find  in  it  spiritual  blessing ;  we  shall  be  roused  to 
a  new  idealism;  we  shall  have  in  this  country  as  a  com¬ 
pensation  for  the  evils  of  war  a  new  unity,  a  new  brother- 


THE  CROSSED  HANDS  OF  BLESSING  21 1 


hood,  a  new  world-wide  vision,  a  new  cooperation.”  How 
bitterly  our  fondest  hopes  have  been  dashed  to  the  ground  ! 
How  humiliating  the  national  spectacle  of  narrow  and 
.  selfish  and  callous  insularity — of  petty  peanut  politics, 
when  the  times  called  for  broad  clear  statesmanship — of 
the  gyrations  of  manikins  when  the  hour  called  for  the 
greatness  of  men ! 

Do  you  ask  whether  we  can  celebrate  Thanksgiving  in 
the  light  of  all  this?  Yes!  We  can  worship  God  and  re¬ 
ceive  and  radiate  His  blessings  even  though  the  hands  of 
blessing  seem  to  us  to  be  crossed  hands.  In  the  end  the 
crossed  hands  of  blessing,  though  they  have  disappointed 
our  expectations,  will  not  fail  in  working  out  to  our  salva¬ 
tion.  We  must  have  the  grateful  confidence  of  those  who 
understand  that  our  extremity  is  God’s  opportunity.  If 
God  has  seemed  to  cross  His  hands,  they  are  still  the  hands 
of  blessing.  If  the  glory  does  not  come  our  way,  it  is 
because  ours  was  not  the  best  way. 

“When  winds  are  raging  o’er  the  upper  ocean, 

And  billows  wild  contend  with  angry  roar; 

’Tis  said,  far  down,  beneath  the  wild  commotion, 

That  peaceful  stillness  reigneth  evermore. 


Far,  far  beneath,  the  noise  of  tempests  dietli, 
And  silver  waves  chime  ever  peacefully, 

And  no  rude  storm,  how  fierce  soe’er  it  flieth, 
Disturbs  the  Sabbath  of  that  deeper  sea. 


So  to  the  heart  that  knows  Thy  love,  O  Purest, 
There  is  a  temple,  sacred  evermore; 

And  all  the  babble  of  life’s  angry  voices 
Dies  in  hushed  stillness  at  its  peaceful  door. 


212 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


Far,  far  away,  the  roar  of  passion  dieth, 

And  loving  thoughts  rise  kind  and  peace  fully'-. 

And  no  rude  storm,  how  fierce  soe’er  it  flieth, 

Disturbs  the  soul  that  dwells,  O  Lord,  in  Thee.” 

And  this  is  not  only  a  day  of  thanksgiving,  but  a  day 
of  supplication  too.  If  the  hands  of  God’s  blessing  seem 
to  be  crossed,  let  us  have  faith  to  believe,  but  above  all  let 
us  have  faith  to  lay  hold  upon  Him,  and  cry  like  old  Jacob 
in  the  gray  dawn  of  that  fateful  morning,  “I  will  not  let 
thee  go,  except  thou  bless  me.”  Go  back  with  me,  if  you 
please,  to  the  grim  days  of  the  Civil  War.  The  darkest 
time  in  American  life,  without  a  single  exception,  was  the 
year  from  midsummer  1862  to  midsummer  1863.  In 
September  Lincoln  issued  the  first  copy  of  the  Emancipa¬ 
tion  Proclamation,  largely  with  a  view  to  its  effect  upon 
European  public  opinion.  He  thought  that  if  we  made  the 
men  across  the  sea  understand  that  we  were  fighting  for 
liberty,  fighting  for  a  great  moral  principle,  it  would  rally 
good  men  everywhere  to  the  support  of  the  North.  And 
in  part  this  was  true,  but  the  aristocracies  and  dynasties  of 
the  Old  World  were  against  us.  The  cotton  blockade 
was  starving  English  industries.  There  was  constant  pres¬ 
sure  against  the  North  by  certain  selfish  politicians  who 
wanted  to  see  our  country  broken  up.  Lincoln  kept  the 
Emancipation  Proclamation  lying  in  his  drawer  for  weeks, 
waiting  for  a  Union  victory.  The  best  he  could  possibly 
do  was  the  drawn  fight  at  Antietam.  And  when  it  was 
issued,  the  response  of  the  country  was  unfavorable.  Sol¬ 
id  states  like  New  York  and  Pennsvlvania  and  Ohio  and 
Illinois  went  against  the  administration.  The  bleak 
Christmas  of  1862  shuddered  in  the  horror  of  the  most 
awful  defeat  of  the  Civil  War,  when  Burnside  was 


THE  CROSSED  HANDS  OF  BLESSING  213 

smashed  at  Fredericksburg.  The  army  of  the  Potomac 
was  sacrificed  again  and  again  in  a  series  of  ghastly  at¬ 
tempts  to  find  a  general,  and  from  January  to  April 
General  Grant  failed  repeatedly  in  his  efforts  to  open  the 
Mississippi  River  at  Vicksburg.  Across  the  water  there 
was  danger*;  at  home  there  was  defeat  and  panic;  and  in 
civilian  life  treason  stalked  naked  and  unashamed. 

Now  what  happened?  Abraham  Lincoln — God  keep 
his  memory  green — a  great  representative  of  a  great  peo¬ 
ple,  on  March  30,  1863,  sounded  a  call  for  a  national  day 
of  fasting  and  prayer.  In  language  like  one  of  the  old 
prophets  he  called  upon  his  fellow  countrymen  to  humble 
themselves  before  the  offended  Power,  to  confess  their 
national  sins,  and  to  pray  for  clemency  and  forgiveness. 
Thus  on  April  30th,  1863,  at  the  darkest  hour  of  Amer¬ 
ican  national  life,  this  country  “caught  at  God's  skirts, 
and  prayed."  What  followed?  At  Chancellorsville,  on 
May  9th,  the  bloody  defeat  of  Hooker.  Is  that  your 
answer  to  prayer  ?  Ah,  but  wait  a  moment !  Chancellors¬ 
ville  cost  Stonewall  Jackson,  and  with  Jackson  Lee  would 
have  won  Gettysburg.  Chancellorsville  created  in  the 
Southern  Army  the  fatal  determination  to  invade  the 
North,  and  that  was  the  beginning  of  the  end.  General 
Lee  listened  to  the  Northern  pacifists,  who  were  making  a 
noise  disproportionate  to  their  numbers.  Moreover,  He 
looked  with  longing  at  the  full  granaries  and  richly  stocked 
farms  of  Pennsylvania.  When  he  had  sent  a  request  for 
food  to  Richmond  he  had  received  the  reply,  “If  General 
Lee  wants  rations  he  will  find  them  in  Pennsylvania." 
And  so,  exulting  in  its  strength  and  sure  of  victory,  the 
Southern  Army  struck  north.  And  the  night  after  Chan¬ 
cellorsville  Abraham  Lincoln,  pacing  to  and  fro  in  the 


214 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


dark,  bowed  before  Almighty  God  and  promised  that  if 
He  gave  him  the  victory  he  would  never  forsake  Him. 
Lincoln  said  to  his  friend,  General  Sickels:  “I  told  Him 
that  it  was  His  war,  and  our  cause  was  His  cause,  but  we 
couldn’t  stand  another  Fredericksburg  or  Chancellorsville. 
And  I  then  and  there  made  a  solemn  vow  to  Him  that  if 
He  would  stand  by  our  boys  at  Gettysburg  I  would  stand 
by  Him.  And  He  did  stand  by  our  boys,  and  I  will  stand 
by  Him.  And  after  that  I  don’t  know  how  it  was,  I  can’t 
explain  it,  soon  a  sweet  comfort  crept  into  my  soul  that 
things  would  go  all  right  at  Gettysburg,  and  that  is  why  I 
had  no  fears  about  you.”  And  things  did  go  “all  right” 
at  Gettysburg. 

Was  it  merely  a  chance  or  a  coincidence  that  within 
ninety  days  after  the  time  that  the  nation  got  down  on 
her  knees  before  God,  and  that  Abraham  Lincoln  as  a 
great  high  priest  of  the  nation  went  down  on  his  knees 
before  God,  the  whole  aspect  completely  changed,  that 
Gettysburg  was  won,  that  Grant  hammered  his  way  into 
Vicksburg  and  cleared  the  Mississippi  so  that  its  waters 
flowed  unchecked  to  the  sea,  that  the  voice  of  treason  and 
sedition  was  hushed,  that  Henry  Ward  Beecher  and 
Charles  Francis  Adams  clinched  a  great  Union  victory 
across  the  water,  and  that  within  three  months  following 
this  exhibition  of  united  prayer  the  beginning  of  the  end 
had  come,  “a  nation  saved,  a  race  delivered?” 

Or  consider  the  situation  in  the  spring  of  1918.  Russia 
crushed  and  disintegrated,  the  Central  Powers,  confident 
of  victory,  began  on  the  21st  of  March  the  long-heralded 
movement  which  was  to  smash  the  Allied  lines,  roll  up  the 
ends  of  it,  take  the  seacoast  towns,  and  batter  Paris  to 
pieces.  They  cut  thirty-five  miles  deep  into  Allied  terri- 


THE  CROSSED  HANDS  OF  BLESSING  215 


tory.  The  British  Fifth  Army  was  broken  to  pieces.  In 
a  second  and  a  third  successful  drive  they  broke  the  Allied 
line  again  and  again ;  they  took  a  hundred  and  thirty-five 
thousand  prisoners  and  great  quantities  of  guns  and  am¬ 
munition.  They  dropped  giant  shells  on  the  city  of  Paris. 
General  Haig  in  despair  cried,  “With  our  backs  to  the 
wall,  and  believing  in  the  justice  of  our  cause,  each  one  of 
us  must  fight  to  the  end.”  Then  it  was  that  on  the  thirtieth 
day  of  May  the  President  called  America  to  fasting  and 
prayer,  to  confession  of  sin  and  acknowledgement  of  de¬ 
pendence  on  God.  We  confessed  our  sins,  we  prayed  for 
deliverance.  The  nation  was  on  its  knees  before  God. 
And  then  what?  In  that  third  great  offensive  four  French 
divisions  had  been  wiped  out  and  the  road  to  Paris  was 
wide  open.  At  Chateau  Thierry  the  apex  of  the  German 
line  was  stopped  “by  the  grace  of  God  and  a  few  marines.” 
And  from  that  time  on  it  rolled  back  and  rolled  back  until 
on  every  front,  from  the  North  Sea  to  Palestine,  over¬ 
whelming  victories  marked  for  the  Allied  forces  the  be¬ 
ginning  of  the  end. 

You  can  call  these  things  only  coincidences  if  you  wish. 
There  will  be  some  to  explain  them  by  natural  laws  and 
military  forces,  and  they  are  welcome  to  their  opinions. 
But  to  me  the  voice  that  came  clear  and  high  and  strong 
over  the  roll  of  the  cannon  was  as  the  voice  of  an  angel. 
And  I  want  to  hear  that  voice  again  today.  Would  God 
that  America  might  listen  once  more  to  hear  it,  and  that 
Almighty  God  might  show  us  that  the  crossed  hands  of 
blessing  are  to  bring  after  all  the  better  world,  not  in  our 
way,  but  in  His.  Let  us  expect  it,  work  for  it,  pray  for 
it,  and  leave  the  rest  with  Him. 


2l6 


THE  GOD  OF  THE  UNEXPECTED 


“In  the  hour  of  death,  after  this  life’s  whim, 

When  the  heart  beats  low,  and  the  eyes  grow  dim, 
And  pain  has  exhausted  every  limb — 

The  lover  of  the  Lord  shall  trust  in  Him. 

When  the  will  has  forgotten  the  life-long  aim, 

And  the  mind  can  only  disgrace  its  fame, 

And  a  man  is  uncertain  of  his  own  name — 

The  power  of  the  Lord  shall  fill  this  frame. 

When  the  last  sigh  is  heaved,  and  the  last  tear  shed, 
And  the  coffin  is  waiting  beside  the  bed, 

And  the  widow  and  child  forsake  the  dead — 

The  angel  of  the  Lord  shall  lift  this  head. 

For  even  the  purest  delight  may  pall, 

And  power  must  fail,  and  the  pride  must  fall, 

And  the  love  of  the  dearest  friends  grow  small — 

But  the  glory  of  the  Lord  is  all  in  all.” 


The  End 


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